Spanish Morocco Berber sword

[Jim McDougall]

Originally Posted by fernando

Go figure ...

The following is an email received from my acquainted Señor Juan L. Calvó:

Estimado Señor Viana,
Celebro tener noticias suyas. Los machetes de su interés, tengo entendido son dominicanos, propios de la etnia de la Isla de Santo Domingo. Esto me fue informado con posterioridad a la clausura del Museo, por lo que en su ficha me limite a anotar el origen apuntado por el coleccionista que cedió estas piezas,
Reciba un afectuoso saludo
Juan L. Calvó

Which in a rough translation we can read:

Those machetes in which you show interest are, as i have understood, ethnically Dominican, from the Santo Domingo island. This was informed after the museum closure, for i simply made note of such origin in their records, after being enlightened by the collector who has ceded these pieces (to the museum).

I realize this later information would have taken place during conversations had with the owning collector, when the Barcelona municipality decided to close the museum (2009) and requested them to withdraw their property.

Time we compare those examples from Barcelona examples to the one originally posted by Mahratt ... just saying .


.

Well said Fernando, and the synopsis in your previous post was a perfectly orchestrated example of how complex the classification of ethnographic forms can be!
I think what we can take from the discussion exercise in this case is that these particular forms of machete/guanabacoa types seem to have developed at an uncertain location in the Spanish colonies sometime probably earlier to mid 19th c.

Obviously with the trade and other commerce in these regions and with the maritime routes throughout as a conduit, there was considerable diffusion of these forms. Therefore the futility of trying to assign a certain classification to them is made difficult by this.


I have thought for some time (again it has been two decades or more that these have been studied) that these are perhaps best broadly classified as Spanish colonial swords often in use as machetes.


Any regionally oriented assessment to specific examples of these may be best assessed and described by locally distinct 'dress or decoration' and key inscriptions or blade motif which obviously denote areas and/or period.


Clearly there are examples with Dominican inscriptions......so these illustrate presence there; similarly there are examples in Philippines so again.......and so on. I think Senor Calvo's paper is superb, and well illustrated.


Fernando's point is well made, and I think the discussion going forward will be well served by further examples and any notes on provenance when possible without focus on debating what to call them. The 'Berber' term is yet another example of collectors terms which we have come to use for colloquial uniformity for discussion and reference.