Traditional, hand made blades from far off places... Little help please?

[driftwould]

Hi all,

I'm new to the forum and to blade collecting and am trying to find good information about collecting hand made daggers, swords or other blades- like you'd find in Central Asia, North Africa, Nepal, etc- from various traditional styles with ornate decoration and cultural and/or historical value. I'm a history buff and constant traveler and am specifically interested in blades with a story, whether it's my own story of buying daggers in Xinjiang, or the history and craftsmanship of an older blade. I think blades like this must be collected reasonably commonly, but I'm having trouble finding information about them, especially how to tell a modern fake from a real, old one.

I currently live in Taiwan and am also beginning to research local tribal blades produced by non-Chinese natives, have visited Xinjiang (Western China) where I bought several hand made, but not old, Uighur knives of wonderful artistry straight from the smiths, and recently bought the linked North African blade on Ebay (possibly too expensive... possibly I've been had...) but at least the pictures will show you what I'm interested in and why I really need some help finding out how to tell good from fake ones (at least, when not buying from the smiths directly)!

One more thing, I lived in China for six years and have just moved here to Taiwan and there are great markets with some real, and lots of fake, knives... and everything else... for sale. So... please point me in the direction of existing posts on this, and/or post some help here!


Uighur Daggers from Xinjiang (can't post photos of my own for some reason):

https://www.google.com/search?q=uig...baxJomkkAXc1IBw&ved=0CD8QsAQ&biw=1366&bih=617
http://wetenmenziriliri.blogspot.tw/2007/07/uighur-knife-of-yengisar-yngisar_7409.html

Obviously I know mine were hand made by the artisans on sight, since I bought them directly. But what about something like the below from Ebay, or something similar at a bazaar in Taipei... Xian... Bishkek... wherever, where fakes are ubiquitous and Westerners are targets?

Ebay Dagger:


http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Nor...D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557

Thanks a lot!

 

[Bob6794]

You can take a look into higonokami knives they have an interesting story to them, though I don't think I can post a link to that one. Unfortunately as the person who posted the story on a thread has a few NSFW pictures, though their of anime characters in the background which are topless with a knife as a main centerpiece of the picture, it's on the britishblade forum just type in "higonokami" into google and it will be one of the top links. This next link is in japanese and you may need to use google translate but it talks about how the blade is made.
http://www.ehamono.com/master/repo/nagao.html

 

[driftwould]

Thanks, I'll check those out. Do you know how to.tell real from fake, or where to find this information?

 

[Bob6794]

Additional information on that I believe is in the other website on britishblades I mentioned, the NSFW stuff is pretty much some somewhat poorly drawn anime characters who are topless in 2-3 photos from what I recall. I didn't even notice till someone mentioned it. In short there 2 guys who can still claim they makes these 1 official and one unofficial, the unofficial guy had a falling out with the union years ago and started making them under a different name. Still built the same way and everything though, and from my understanding his stuff tends to be of high quality on average. Personally with how cheap they are I pick up 1 of each, as far as I know there is no true successor to making these knives so when they are gone the "true" higonokami knives are gone too.

If your not allowed to access it due to the content send me a message and I copy the information and send it to you without the offensive material. I know of one other website which did this I ran across but I don't know where that site was for the life of me, copied it word for word too including almost every picture.

 

[driftwould]

Thanks, I looked at the knives, but they're not really what I'm interested in. I like pieces like the ones I linked, with traditional ornamentation on them.