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Originally Posted by Ian
Marius, that is not entirely true. The making of wootz or bulat was revived by the Russian metallurgist Pavel Asonov in the 19th C. and modern metallurgy can produce a fair approximation to traditional wootz.
On a personal note, I was shown a number of high end knives made from the 1970s to the 1990s that had new blades indistinguishable from traditional wootz. These were in the possession of a member of an Indian royal family to whom I was introduced by a dear friend. Unfortunately, I was not permitted to photograph these knives and swords, but they were outstanding in their construction and decoration. While the decoration was performed by Indian craftsmen, it was unclear where the blades were forged and my informant either did not know or wasn't saying.
When I say there are outstanding examples coming from modern Rajasthan and other parts of NW India, I am not talking about what appears on eBay and other online sources, but rather what I have seen custom made for people of substantial standing in Indian society. Of the latter, I have seen no pictures published.
Ian
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That is very interesting!
You were shown a number of high end knives like the one in the photos (also in my possesion)?
I seriously doubt that the wootz swords indistinguishible from old wootz were recently made. What they usually do, is to get mundane wootz blades (as there are in the thousands lying in the armouries of the Rajastani artistocrats), clean them, etch them, decorate them with new koftgari and fit them with new hilts and scabbards and then they claim they made them anew (something like the one in the photos - 18th century blade given a completely new - 1970 - make-up).
And that's precisely why it was so unclear where the blades were forged, as they weren't forged anywhere but were taken from old armouries.
I had a similar experience in Mumbai where I visited a swordsmith's workshop. They also showed me some exceptional wootz blades they said they made themselves but when I asked them to make a blade of my design, a was refused bluntly. I later found out about the trick with refurbishing old wootz blades from an Indian dealer.
I am quite familiar with the works of Asonov, Verhoeven and Pendray (and their works are public knowledge) and I have seen quite a lot of the new wootz but everything I saw was significantly different from the antique wootz. If it were otherwise, we would see new wootz knives up for sale regularly, and maybe even see a major knife-producing company aquiring the technology and producing them on larger scale but this never happens.
