A Very Good Decorated Spanish Antique Albacete Fighting Knife

A 19th Century Spanish Fighting knife of Albacete, Spain; The knife measures 28cm in length with an elaborate ornately pierced blade. The blade has two holes and an open panel incised for decoration, with added pin point engraved decoration. The hilt is brass, inlaid with carved bone. The bone has been fluted length ways and further inlaid with decorative brass panels. A Handbook for Travellers in Spain (printed in 1855), by Richard Ford, has a commentary on the knife culture that prevailed in Spain at the time. When we read an account of an exotic land written by an English traveler in 19th century Albacete, Abula, he describes that as owing to its central position, from whence roads and rails branch to Aragon, Murcia, Valencia, and Madrid, it is a place of great traffic, and is a town of locomotives, from the English rail, the French dilly, to the Spanish donkey. . . . "Albacete is called the Sheffield of Spain, as Chatelherault is the knife making centre of France; but everything is by comparison, and the coarse cutlery turned out in each, at whose make and material an English artisan smiles, perfectly answers native ideas and wants. The object of a Spanish knife is to "chip bread and kill a man," "

Code: 20810