Knife for I.D. Chinese? Tibetan? Bhutanese?

[ausjulius]

Originally Posted by Norman McCormick

Hi,
The comments say it all.
Regards,
Norman.

P.S. No point in excess images for this item.

hello norman .
pleas epost more detailed pictures of this item.
your knife is antique.
it is from Amdo,
it has nothing to do with chinese and is not junk.
is not fake and is an established type of knife and sword made by peoples inhabiting Amdo.
the veriaiton of these tibetian weapons is extreme.
amdo swords generally like to have a cup feature on the hilt that will couver the scabbard.
these knives were till the modern era carried as personal weapons, they fall in a catagory between belt knives and swords and generaly are a mix of each weapons features.
they are worn in isolated parts of tibet even today and even under such conditins and duress as the tibetians are forced to live such items are still ethnic indicators and items of status.

i dont know the specific ethnic group that makes this style as liturature on these knives of any accuracy is nonexsistant and even the tibetians themselves generally dont recognise all the styles apart from their obvious regional differences due to the size and isloaiton of the different ethnic groups.
amdo, kham and the lhasa tibetians all have a style they recognise but to get more informaiton you would need to ask amdo people and even then the amdo area is huge and diverse.

the tibetian cultural realm has such a vast array of these that are undocumented.