Collection, or kitchen?
 

So, I picked these two items up a couple of months ago. I'm uncertain if they belong in my collection...or in my kitchen. The utilitarian handles suggest kitchen. The top one in the first picture below has a thin but solid blade, and bears a maker's mark of some kind (could simply say "made in China"). It also has some rectangular marks that could suggest what the steel once was part of (like when you can still discern the pattern that reveals a blade was made from an old file).

The bottom knife has a spine that is about 1/4" thick. It is shaped like a kukri blade, but the bottom edge is sharpened, which would be backwards on a kukri.

So, do these have a place in my collection, or my kitchen?

Hi Shadye78:

I think these are certainly tools, more likely for the garden than the kitchen. While each could be used effectively as a weapon, I don't believe that was their primary purpose.

The blade profile of the lower one is similar to a type of Thai utility Knife, while the fat-bellied chopper could be from many different places. The hilts don't strike me as being specifically Asian or SE Asian--again, they could be from many places.

I have enlarged your pictures of the blade marks but I cannot identify them. They are not Chinese or Kangi IMHO.

Ian

These marks are similar to Vietnamese letters "HĐ" and "fi".

Thank you for making the images clearer and larger. I'm sure im wrong, but I saw somewhere that the characters that look like 'HE' may bear some similarity to the Japanese kanji characters for 'made by'. This would then indicate the following character(s) would be the smith's name.
Again, I'm probably wrong, and I appreciate the comment that these may be Vietnamese characters.
As for origin, they "feel" Asian to me, but that is hardly specific either in being an exact locale (i think Asia is kind of a large continent-lol), or being based on any objective measure.

I agree with Ian that these probably belong more in the garden than the kitchen.
They do look to me to be Asian, but i certainly could not place the exact origin.
And i don't mean to call out your measuring skills, but that spine clearly looks more like 1/8'' rather than the 1/4" you have suggested. ;)

This mark may be Chinese family characters 干丁 Gan Ding (or Qian Ding)

Spine is actually 7/32", so 0.22". I was a little off In the measurement, but you only had a poor quality picture to go by, so no worries. :cool:

I think you're right Ren Ren

I looked carefully - in the Vietnamese alphabet there is no letter "f", the combination "ph" is used there. I think that what I saw as "fi" is the Chinese character 利 "li". It can mean:
surname Li
sharp
favorable
advantage
benefit
profit
interest

two cambodian knives

The romanized Vietnamese alphabet has no F. The combined letters PH are its phonetic equivalent in the written language.

(Just for additional information, there is no W either. OA is substituted, for instance oanh is pronounced something like wan.)

You are absolutely right, Philip! Thanks for these important comments!

If I may ask, what features allow you to so confidently attribute these to Cambodia?

blade shape
 

The knife on the bottom, in that image leading off this thread -- the one with the recurved edge and somewhat kukri-esque (kukroid?) profile -- I've seen the form on some Thai knives, and also on a SE Asian rattan splitting knife which, if memory serves correctly, is called a piso raut.

Hi Philip,

Agree completely. That is a fairly common utility blade profile in Thailand and neighboring areas of Laos and Cambodia, and into parts of Vietnam. The spine of the blade is recurved and the edge is convex. The hilt style in the original post is found to a degree throughout the region, but the single iron ferrule is somewhat favored in Cambodia and Vietnam. The latter may be the most likely origin for this one.

Attached are pictures of one form of these knives and the bamboo "sheath" it is often carried in. This is a small bladed example to which the name pisau raut (rattan knife) has been applied. Larger blades of this form may be carried in woven basket sheaths or sheaths comprising two pieces of wood bound together with rattan strips or simply nailed together.

Ian.

Really cool scabbard.