Knives

Chinese

river Avvakumovka, Ussuri Krai, Primorsky Oblast

late 19th - early 20th cemtury

Museum of the Peoples of the USSR

Metal: iron; bone; leather; fibers: plant fiber (rope); wood

length 23.0; width 2.6; length 22.6; width 2.0

РЭМ 8761-11106

A pair of knives. 1) Garden jack-knife with a metal blade and horn handle. One end of the blade is sharpened, while the other is rounded and has a round hole with a metal ring passed in it. The handle is made from a curved piece of horn. The blade is movably joined to the handle with a metal nail, and inserted in the narrow slit in the handle. 2). Flat bone knife, convex on one side and with a groove on the other. One end of the knife is rectangular with a round hole, the other is sharpened. Both knives are secured on a round spool, the bone knife with a leather string passed through the hole in the knife and the spool, the garden knife with a thick rope tied in a loop around the spool and the ring. They were used in harvesting the ginseng roots, the jack-knife to clear the area around ginseng free of weed, and the bone knife, for digging out the plant’s root.