Would readers be willing to describe this dagger to me?

[kestrell]

I'm reading a series set in mid-18th century England, and one of my favorite characters carries a small dagger with a curved blade, and it sounded so charmingly baroque that I wrote the author and asked what kind of knife it was. She replied that it is a Turkish ceremonial dagger, and there is a picture of it on her Pinterest page
https://www.pinterest.com/elizabethhoyt/duke-of-sin/

Would anyone be willing to describe it for me?

Thank you in advance!

Comments

[siderea]

Whoa. *goes looks*

More technical deets:

That's hilt's not ivory. It's a luminous milky-white. From the materials description – the only potenitally white material on the list is nephrite – and the fact it has no seams, I am surmising the hilt (with its vestigial crosspiece) is one giant lump of white jade, carved to shape. [ETA: Oh, just found where the museums says it belongs to a whole group of similar weapons "with jade grips", so yes.]

I'll be sitting over here fanning myself.

The jewels of the flowers and leaves, and the gold or copper stems connecting and outlining them are all set flush into the surface of the hilt – looks like cloisonné, but I don't know that the term is applicable because it looks like no enamel was used. It's more like parquetry made of jemstones.

So, to recap, somebody once had the hubris to get a hand-size lump of white jade, and not only carve it into the hilt of a dagger, and not only hollow out a place for the blade's tang to fit, they then also carved little compartments all over it, lined them with gold, and then put precisely fitting little gemstones all over them. Also, carved lines all over it and filled them with gold wire. Somebody with really epic hand-eye coordination, and nerves of steel.

The leaves on most of the hilt are agate, brown with white and orange stripes, where the stripes have been aligned so they're horizontally across each leaf. There are some green leaves on the crosspiece, which look like jade. There are two flowers on the hilt, visible in the picture; their six petals are made of some orangey-yellow facet-cut jem (tourmaline?), and their centers made of a bright red cabochon-cut (dome, no facets) jems (ruby?) and there are similar glowy red dots on the crosspiece.

The lettering on the blade is Arabic, and it would sure be nice if the museum would tell us what it said.

The blade is three times the length of the hilt; it is slender – I'm guestimating the blade is about an inch across at the hilt – and has a very gentle and continuous curve.

The scabbard is what the phrase "jewel-encrusted" was invented to describe. Also "pavé": the design has a whole bunch of "ribbons" of little facetted jems set tightly close to one another, as well as larger stones featured by the desing. The gemstones of the scabbard are various shades of red and green, in various sizes, and there sure are a lot of them. They are arranged in an ornate geometric pattern. Both the designs of the gold and the jemstones make use of interlaced-line motifs, the design in the gold using both angles and curves, the jemstones in arcs and twining in spirals.

Zooming in close to the gold pattern on the scabbard, and reviewing the materials list, I think it is gold-chased copper repouseé [Edit: materials confirmed "scabbards of gilt copper worked in relief"], presumably backed by something more substantial. The design is raised from the surface of the scabbard, and uses various heights/depths for visual effect. The pattern is mostly geometric lines, plus some leaves, some dots, and what looks to be a raspberry or bunch of grapes at the bottom.

[kestrell]

Oh my, knife porn. I hadn't quite realized I had that fetish.

Thank you for the sybaritic level of description.

I'm trying to think how long it took someone to make something like this; I expect different areas of the work were divided amongst a number of artisans.

[siderea]

The museum page says that while the blade and scabbard are of Turkish manufacture, the hilt is possibly Indian, which on retrospect makes sense - it's stylistically different. So two parties at least.