Good feeling?

[josh stout]

Unless you see some folding lines, I would guess that it is late 20th C. from Java. I have one just like it. I have not seen the red paint before though. The paint might be for tourists, but the Chinese are also known to paint blades red that are no longer being used. This may be to help against the bad luck of a weapon that has been used.
Josh

[Jim McDougall]

Originally Posted by josh stout

Unless you see some folding lines, I would guess that it is late 20th C. from Java. I have one just like it. I have not seen the red paint before though. The paint might be for tourists, but the Chinese are also known to paint blades red that are no longer being used. This may be to help against the bad luck of a weapon that has been used.
Josh

Josh,
The comment on the Chinese painting blades red that are no longer in use is most interesting. Could you elaborate a bit on that? Some time ago I was trying to discover more on the color red being used on weapons.

Does anyone else have one of these weapons that might be viewed comparitively with this one and might post it?

Best regards,
JIm

[fernando]

Hi Black lacrau ( scorpian ),
Some similarity between your spear head and the one in this link.
http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showthread.php?t=3087
Only mine was bought in an small antiquarian in Ponte de Lima.
Meus cumprimentos / My compliments
Fernando

[josh stout]

[QUOTE=Jim McDougall]Josh,
The comment on the Chinese painting blades red that are no longer in use is most interesting. Could you elaborate a bit on that? Some time ago I was trying to discover more on the color red being used on weapons....QUOTE]

Sorry that is about all I know. Chinese villagers often paint over a blade rather than oiling it. The ones I have were done with silver paint, one on a folded blade and one on a practice/performance piece. Phillip and Scott discussed the occasional piece with red paint, and I think there may be a Taoist component, but you would have to ask them. Tibetan things often have traces of red on the fittings or scabbard, but that would have been part of the original decoration and related to Buddhist iconography.
Josh

[Mark]

Not a red-painted blade, but this poor fellow had a gloppy coating of red paint on the scabbard & handle, clearly applied recently, as it slopped over onto the fittings. It is a Shan style dha, from eastern Burma or northern Thailand.

Here is another one (Kachin this time, from Northern Burma), where the red might have been original.


No idea what the red signifies, though.