Collection, or kitchen?

[Ren Ren]

Originally Posted by shayde78

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).

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

[shayde78]

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.

[Ian]

Originally Posted by Ren Ren

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

I think you're right Ren Ren

[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

[Philip]

Originally Posted by Ren Ren

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

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.)

[Ren Ren]

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