Scott Polar Research Institute
Museum catalogue: Arctic Material Culture Collection
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GalleryKayak knife
Details
| Accession no.: | Y: 2018/4/3 | ||||||
| Title: | Kayak knife | ||||||
| Description: | An ornate kayak knife made in an East Greenland style, with a narrow steel blade hafted to an oval wooden handle by a perforated metal clasp at the top of the blade. The handle is inlaid on three sides with circular bone discs and is topped with an ivory pommel complete with a twin strop of seal skin beaded with ivory. Collected by Professor Lawrence Rickard and Phyllis Wager during the British East Greenland Expedition, 1935-36. | ||||||
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| Number of items: | 1 | ||||||
| Full description: |
An ornate kayak knife, with a long, narrow steel blade relative to the handle, hafted to oval wooden handle by a steel clasp at the top of the blade. The blade is unevenly fluted and blutn along both edges, terminating in a sharp point for stabbing. The clasp is conical, tapering to meet the blade at the base of the handle, and is comprised of two rows of rectangular perforations and a top row of square perforations around the upper portion, topped with four spouts of steel resembling whale spouts or flukes protruding up the handle. The handle is also inlaid on three sides with nine circular bone discs in rows of three. A marine ivory pommel at the top of the handle is complete with a twin strop of seal skin beaded at the base with an incised ivory bead from which the strop divides, each half then beaded with five smaller ivory beads and terminating with a larger oval bead. |
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