Old Pearl Bladed Sterling Silver Knife | ||
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Posted 14 years ago
bahamaboy
(224 items)
This was a very unique gift I received from a girl I dated for a while. I've never seen anything like it. "Mother of pearl" blade and a sterling silver handle. Don't know how old but it sure looks cool. Whole thing is about 7-8 inches long. Anyone ever seen anything like this??
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Hi from Sydney Australia!
I reckon it's a letter opener.
Maybe she wanted you to "keep in touch"?
Nice item.
i second the idea of it being a letter opener
Another idea I've seen is a 'page cutter'. Books were printed with uncut pages and you'd have to cut them with an item like this too. I did French at uni. in the seventies and still there were many books printed with uncut pages. Les Editions de Minuit were all needing cutting. Two weeks ago I was reminded of this when I bought a first edition of En attendant Godot which had rather untidily cut pages.
I have a wacko suggestion. Recall that the caviar spoons is made of MOP. Now, if I were designing a letter opener or page cutter, I'd fashion the blade a straight blade, not one with such a curved tip. OK, here's the wacko suggestion: could this be a serving piece, with a blade material chosen for its property of remaining cool in warm temperatures, or for its quality of not reacting chemically with the product that it is to serve? The blade looks somewhat like that of a master butter knife....
Oh, I just thought of another suggestion: What about a page turner?
OK, no more posts late at night for me! My suggestions were goofy. A word on the blade, though. If this were designed as a letter opener, it's a goofy design. You'd have to tear the envelope to insert the blade, and when blade were finally in place - poised to cut - envelope would be a wreck already. Finally, blade wouldn't do much good opening or cutting the envelope. And I don't think that it's a page turner, either. This amateur now retreats.
Last try! I think that it could be a page cutter.
Page turners are wide (about 2ins) and are long (about the length of a broadsheet newspaper. They broke, the length gets shorter on the restored ones as they were rounded off at the top edge.
There's one of these letter openers on ebay at the moment: Item number: 170784113916.
There's also an example of a page turner: Item number: 190640943426
All in all ther are: 50 items found similar to 'ANTIQUE MOTHER OF PEARL SILVER LETTER OPENER BIRMINGHAM' on ebay UK at the moment.
Thank you very much for broadening my knowledge! I'm familiar with the usual page turner form, but I hadn't realized that there was a genre of letter opener with a blunt-edged MOP scimitar blade. The blade seemed to me too blunt and too broad to be an effective cutting implement, and late at night, after reading the cautious posits, I assumed that the answer wouldn't be easy! I dismissed as improbable the possibility of this object being an instance of an acceptable, 'received' letter opener form. However, there must be an operational method I'm unfamiliar with - like driving on the wrong side of the road - for, indeed, I do see a number of such letter openers on UK ebay. Hmmm, I'd much prefer to encounter this blade shape on a George Unite butter knife - which I promise not to employ opening letters or cutting pages in folio volumes. Thank you all for enlightening me here on the wrong side of the road! Vale!
I'm with you, Id rather use it on the Lurpak! Cheers from across the big pond!