Dagger ID, MN Garage Sale find

[David]

Originally Posted by ausjulius

...the chinese have copied these , and mongolian and tibetian knives and massproduced them over the last 200 years or so,, many of the knives the mongols and tibetians used were chinese made, as the chinese could make it cheaper,, and with interesting materials , like ray skin,, which ,, isnt vary common , in say tuva,, or mongolia,,
the native ones generaly have better steel blades,, and the chinese ones come with things like chopsticks , pickel forks,and chinese decorations on them , chinese seem to have been oblivious to the natives taste,,

The Chinese knives that you refer to that come with chopsticks and sometimes other eating instruments is called a trousse, i believe. The blades do often look similar to the example that Craig posted, but i don't think it can be called a trousse without the other eating impliments. While it is possible that the form of the trousse blade might have been based on these traditional boan knives, i don't know if it is fair to say that they are merely meant to be copies of this form. The Chinese trousse has been a type of utility blade for many years and i don't believe it is attempting to pass itself off as a boan knife. It can be found on all levels of quality and you will find many fine old examples with high quality blades. The Chinese are not oblivious to Boan tastes, these are impliments meant for Chinese dining so the chopsticks and pickle knives are quite appropriate. There are trousse from other cultures as well that may include different impliment for that particular cultures tastes. Here is a link to a fine Chinese trousse. If you google "Chinese trousse" it you will find many more:
http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showthread.php?t=807

[ausjulius]

the chinese trousse is a chinese version of the traditional mongolian and manchu knives,,
the knife styles native to china are quite different..
many times the chinese produced these knives to sell to the nitive populations that boarded china,, also they became popular in korea and japan, they are not originaly a chinese knfie,,
and for the most part were only possessed by the richer classes in china,, as the avverage chinese used the local national forms of knife,,

the chinese created their own style of these knives, adding many fancy tools and chinese decorations,, aswell as dome different blade forms,,

still as i said, you see many of these knives with chinese fittings on them in places as far away as tuva .. the chinese massproduced them in the 19th centuary on a very large scale,, and dont seem to have made them specificaly for the local groups they were sellign them to,,
i remember reading a book,, dont remember the title , long time ago , but it was written by an english solider, in the book he commented that in hongkong ... sometime in 1900 , there was a fine array of chinese copies of japanese swords, and native knives and swords,, all of chinese make, on display in the shops and markets there,,
seems they were producing them by the ton,, like those bone or ivoery katanas