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Originally Posted by derek
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Cause I'm lazy I'm not gonna check the references, so:
I can't understand why the first one is armenian - it's very uncharacteristic for armenian work, which is defined as:
a. Southern caucasian hilt (3 screws or for older ones - fat 2 screws solid hilt, with round coin like thingies under the screws - however "thin" 2 screws with coin like thingies would be more dagestani)
b. Gold koftgari around the fuller on the blade.
c. The blade is most likely a little bit to the large side for old pieces, usually one off-centered fuller, or two fullers in the center, roundish convergence towards the end, however there are a lot of other possibilities (generally everything is very similar to georgian kindjals).
Finally to be determined to be armenian vs. georgian it either have to have armenian letters or typically iranian/armenian motiffs. One has to remember that most of post 1850 georgian kindjals were made by armenians.
The first one has can be even turkish (I did see some georgian scabbard with copper, and some engravings on copper, usually late 19th century, and have seen some similar turkish work, even through "classical" turkey would be really different), and in my (most likely wrong ?) opinion is not armenian.
The second one can be armenian, but to me it looks that such conclusion is being made in extreme haste, and other possibilities should've been considered. The photos are to bad for me to make a judgement what it really is.The upper part of the hilt can suggest anything, including Dagestan.
The third one is cossack because it has a russian double headed eagle on it. Is it really cossack, or is it russian made, or it's a local master - I would vote for a russian made.
P.S. I'm sorry to say but I disliked all of them.
There was a very high quality armenian kindjal on ebay recently:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...sPageName=WDVW
but the owner already removed the pictures, and I have mine on a different computer.