Ungentlemanlike - Traditional Bad Boy Knives

Jolipapa said:
I knew Thiers had sold many knives in Spain, but I knew not this kind (straight) also. The "rattlesnake tail" is typical, you find it also on Laguioles.

I think they were a bit too expensive for simple tourists, even if those were more fortunate then than today.
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For sure, they were clearly high-end pieces, often (though not always!) more so than locally made ones. In a way, we can think of the relation between Thiers and Spain, as far as 19th-century navajas are concerned, as similar to that between Sheffield and the US when it comes to Bowies from the same period (although I believe Sheffield's output was unparalleled, proportionally speaking). If they were sold to tourists, they must've been rather wealthy ones.
 
coffeecat said:
A ballock knife. 😁
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Closest I have! :D

vNrRxsN.jpg
 
oldmanwilly said:
Does this pattern have any particular name? Where does it originate?
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Looks like a variation of the “Romano” (Gypsy?) knife. There is a thread dedicated to the maker:

Clemente Esposito Amendola

Hello, I would like to present you the production of an artist who, to my opinion, renew completely a great tradition of Italy : the fighting knife of Roma . I really love all his knives . Â
www.bladeforums.com www.bladeforums.com
 
oldmanwilly said:
Does this pattern have any particular name? Where does it originate?
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Hello,
The pattern of the blade is called mozzetta. You can find it everywhere in Italy . But this style of knife can be found in Sicily and Rome.
Clemente's work is dedicated to the old duel tradition. It's why most of his knives are huge, the blade can be 5,9 or more.
In fact they are folding swords 😂

Â
 
Âchillepattada said:
Hello,
The pattern of the blade is called mozzetta. You can find it everywhere in Italy . But this style of knife can be found in Sicily and Rome.
Clemente's work is dedicated to the old duel tradition. It's why most of his knives are huge, the blade can be 5,9 or more.
In fact they are folding swords 😂

Â
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I found a couple of videos showing these:
 
Just Tom. said:
We have a thread for gentleman’s knives - how about a thread for knives that would be decidedly out of place in polite society?

(sorry about the picture quality - it’s raining here and I couldn’t get any good light)
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What is the bottom knife here? Edit: Nevermind it's a Fraraccio.
 
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Trubetzkoy said:
For sure, they were clearly high-end pieces, often (though not always!) more so than locally made ones. In a way, we can think of the relation between Thiers and Spain, as far as 19th-century navajas are concerned, as similar to that between Sheffield and the US when it comes to Bowies from the same period (although I believe Sheffield's output was unparalleled, proportionally speaking). If they were sold to tourists, they must've been rather wealthy ones.
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As far as I know about Spanish history, during XIXth and the beginning of XXth cent. the country was quite unstable and tourism a word to invent.
Production wise, Thiers was on par with Sheffield (550 brands with a workforce of 12000),, on different export markets, Spain being quite its backyard, in mid-XIXth started the move from paper and leather industry to steel and cutlery, though all existing since Middle-Age and relying on the Durolle river.
 
Jolipapa said:
As far as I know about Spanish history, during XIXth and the beginning of XXth cent. the country was quite unstable and tourism a word to invent.
Production wise, Thiers was on par with Sheffield (550 brands with a workforce of 12000),, on different export markets, Spain being quite its backyard, in mid-XIXth started the move from paper and leather industry to steel and cutlery, though all existing since Middle-Age and relying on the Durolle river.
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Regarding tourism, it may be true that Spain was behind other European nations in the 19th century. However, I remember reading explicitly about navajas being a prized souvenirs for wealthy tourists during that period, including French-made ones. The source escapes me right now, though. In any case, I do remember a paper published in Historia Contemporánea according to which Spanish tourism actually saw an important expansion during the 19th century. Here's a (translated) fragment from the conclusion of said paper: "The [Spanish] tourism industry become one more area in which to allocate capital in the course of the 19th century, with the touristic demand increasing notably during that period." Thus, it's not totally far-fetched that navajas might've been bought relatively often by wealthy foreigners visiting the country in the 19th century, which might by the way partially explain the non-negligible number of navajas commonly being auctioned in the US.

As for the Thiers-Sheffield comparison, I don't know about raw numbers. I will say, nonetheless, based on current antique listings, that the proportion of French-made navajas in Spain during the 19th century was probably smaller than the proportion of British-made Bowie knives in the US during the same period. I can't name specific vendors here due to the forum's rules; but right now I'm looking at a Spanish site that specializes in antique navajas, and the proportion of French- to Spanish-made navajas seems to be 7 to 19, whereas I'd say it's easier to find British-made 19th-century Bowies than American-made ones. In any case, 7 to 19 is certainly not a negligible figure, and it shows that indeed France had a very prominent place in the Spanish navaja market at the time.

Cheers!

Edit: A couple links added.
 
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Trubetzkoy said:
Regarding tourism, it may be true that Spanish was behind other European nations in the 19th century. However, I remember reading explicitly about navajas being a prized souvenirs for wealthy tourists during that period, including French-made ones. The source escapes me right now, though. In any case, I do remember a paper published in Historia Contemporánea according to which Spanish tourism actually saw an important expansion during the 19th century. Here's a (translated) fragment from the conclusion of said paper: "The [Spanish] tourism industry become one more area in which to allocate capital in the course of the 19th century, with the touristic demand increasing notably during that period." Thus, it's not totally far-fetched that navajas might've been bought relatively often by wealthy foreigners visiting the country in the 19th century, which might by the way partially explain the non-negligible number of navajas commonly being auctioned in the US.

As for the Thiers-Sheffield comparison, I don't know about raw numbers. I will say, nonetheless, based on current antique listings, that the proportion of French-made navajas in Spain during the 19th century was probably smaller than the proportion of British-made Bowie knives in the US during the same period. I can't name specific vendors here due to the forum's rules; but right now I'm looking at a Spanish site that specializes in antique navajas, and the proportion of French- to Spanish-made navajas seems to be 7 to 19, whereas I'd say it's easier to find British-made 19th-century Bowies than American-made ones. In any case, 7 to 19 is certainly not a negligible figure, and it shows that indeed France had a very prominent place in the Spanish navaja market at the time.

Cheers!

Edit: A couple links added.
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It is hard to compare peaches and pears... Population numbers, purposes and patterns are so different... even sales technics, Thiers using spanish sounding brands on their blades, making true origin identification quite impossible, as explained in the video.

Fortunately we have the unique work of Camille Pagé. Remember that geography was quite different in 1896. (Austria includes Hungary and Bohemia whith the important city of Nixdorf now Czech Mikulášovice)

Imports in Europe
( Y : importing country ; X : exporting country - "pays importateur" is misleading)
Pagé_2.jpg


Imports in the USA :
Pagé_Imports_EU.jpg

To compare to an estimated US production value of $ 2,000 000 / 10,000 000 francs.
 
Jolipapa said:
It is hard to compare peaches and pears... Population numbers, purposes and patterns are so different... even sales technics, Thiers using spanish sounding brands on their blades, making true origin identification quite impossible, as explained in the video. Fortunately we have the unique work of Camille Pagé...
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Very interesting stuff, thanks for sharing!

Indeed it's not always easy to draw comparisons. But it's important to keep in mind that here we are (or at least I am) speaking of very specific knife types (navajas and Bowies), so overall production and exportation numbers can be tricky.

Fortunately, both navajas and Bowies have been studied fairly intensively by enthusiasts and scholars, so we have an idea of the proportion of foreign- vs. locally-made exemplars. For example, here's is what the Spanish weapons historian Guillermo Gómez (who is behind the site from which I took the statistic in my previous post) has written about French-made navajas (my translation): "At the end of the 19th century [...], French navajas were imported in large quantities and were considered of excellent quality in Spain. In some cases there is great confusion because some antique French-made navajas are incorrectly classified as Spanish-made by some books and museum catalogs. Currently, our research allows us to classify most pieces because there is a style and a set of manufacturing techniques found only in French items, even if blades were ultimately acid-etched with Spanish mottos such as 'Viva España.'"

Anyways, this is a very interesting and fun-to-research subject, on which new things will continue to be said. I personally tend to like French-made navajas even more than Spanish-made ones, though both countries produced great pieces.

Cheers!
 
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