Ethnographic folding knives

[KuKulzA28]

Originally Posted by ausjulius

i wounder if they are a european influnce ,, and if they ar eonly on taiwan,, as after all the portagese and dutch were the original colonists there with the chinese comming while the islands were under european control, maybe this pocket knife was derived from a european folding knife, ive seen quite alot of chinese friction folders from mainland china but none with a back spring on the blade.
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I know the blade design itself is southern Chinese/Taiwanese (hoklo and cantonese folks), however the folding style and mechanism may not be "traditional" though it's probably old enough a style to be considered such. I don't know if the Dutch, Spanish, French, or Portuguese have had that much of an influence on Taiwanese knife-making. Perhaps they did. I DO know that Taiwan hasn't been locked away from influences though, as the northern tribes fold their tangs similarly to Chinese and southern tribes have things in common with northern Filipinos and the Burmese Kachins, Naga, and Assam people. Japanese definitely influenced the metallurgy in some areas. But if any Sino/Taiwanese group was to be influenced by the Europeans it would probably be the Cantonese and the Hoklo, those who had the most contact with the Westerners...

an example of that can be seen with Lorchas... ships that combined the European sea-going hull with the Chinese sails... best of both worlds so to speak... so an age-old Chinese blade design and a European folding mechanism? not impossible... but I plan to get some of those folders within a few months so maybe I can comment on this better later on


EDIT: yes there is one maker left as far as I know... he's in the Shihling part of Taipei, Taiwan

[A. G. Maisey]

Here's another Chinese folder.

I use this as a garden knife.

It is unusual in that the liners are of a single piece of steel that has been bent over the spring.

[asomotif]

but my guess is that it is a carpet maker's knife.

Dear Alan,

I have had one of these too and was told it was from eastern India.
The seller traveled to India and eastern asia regularly to buy his stock.
They told me that it had something to do with cleaning coconuts, but it I can imagine that the construction is a bit to fragile for that job.
Any guess is worth as much as mine.

[A. G. Maisey]

Thanks for your input, Asomotif.

I've seen a total of three of these. One of the other ones was about the same as mine, and one was of really excellent quality with an ivory handle. The ivory handle one was with a batch of artifacts on sale in a carpet gallery.

I have seen a documentary on carpet making in Iran where the knife being used by the girl doing the work appeared to be similar to these knives, but as you can imagine, all I got was a fleeting glimpse of the knife, whilst it was in use.

In my household, we use coconuts as a regular part of our diet. My wife takes the shell off with big heavy knife. We don't use the coconut water, but if we did want to use it, she would simply take off a part of the shell, and then open the flesh. Seeing the way coconuts are handled for food, its a bit hard to imagine how a small, light folder could have any relationship to a coconut.

As you say, at this point, any guess is a good one.

[KuKulzA28]

I love coconuts in food and on it's own... a good golok or machete to chop it open and drink its juice... and then scoop out the meat....
the way the meat is harvested and processed is usually that it is scooped or cut out and then left out to dry in the sun... (so I've heard)
if the knife has anything to do with coconuts it's probably to do with the more delicate part of scooping out the meat? or perhaps it is used to shave off the hairs (if the brown hairy type) and using the coconut fibers to make things... I don't know how many people still use coconut fibers to make rope and such though

[A. G. Maisey]

To remove coconut meat, you use a big knife to take the shell off, bit by bit, you don't scoop it out of the shell. Somebody who is skilled at this can do it with a couple of well placed blows, and without damaging the meat.

In Solo my servant uses a bendho to remove the shell, here in Australia my wife uses a little old machete, only about 15 inches long.In fact, any sort of heavy knife will do, but it should be sharp.If its not sharp, you can still get the shell off, but you don't get the meat out in one piece.

I've got a vague memory of seeing professionals de-shelling coconuts, and I think they use a blade that curves away from them, and is anchored in the ground, or in a bench, and they bring the nut down onto it.