[Interested Party]

Is it a pool and eye pattern welded blade, yes. Is it koftgari or painted I don't know. I blew up one of Ian's pictures and I could easily see the cross hatching scratched into the metal to hold the wire or whatever else is used to create these patterns. Once I saw it in that picture, I saw it in all of them. I would imagine that pool and eye is not new and that there are antique examples from all over the world. I don't have my books handy that I can bring up pictures to cite this point. The cartouche on the blade looks recent to my eye, once again with the hashing very visible and the application is wide and uniform, not a pre shaped wire to create more subtle lines. The blade does seem very flat, lacking medial ridges or defined grind lines, a little flat for a lenticular cross section.

Modern, maybe. The question I never hear asked is "Is this knife pretty?" I think it is. To me it looks like whoever made it had some talent and took some pride in their work. I think we do not give the Rajasthan workers enough credit. I wonder about the style of ornamentation. Is it a generic flower or a stylized version of a certain species? The style of the pattern seems from the northern Indian subcontinent, but I wonder more and more about how these patterns became folk art and where the various influences came to be. I would love to dig deeper into the history of these styles and motifs as they stretch from Asia into Europe and Africa and reverberate back again. I have definitely gotten worse presents from friends who felt bad for me because I had to buy old and damaged blades.

Well, enough musing for one morning. Time to go to work. I'm sorry I didn't have something more useful to add to the conversation.