Inventory

Gold Kard

Full Description:

A fine all-steel Indian kard dagger with a tapering watered steel (wootz damascus) blade. The handle is illuminated by gold koftgari in two colors, showing flowers and foliage against a background of thin, gold lines. Even the pommel is decorated, with four rosettes linked by a swastika of stems—a symbol of spirituality commonly used across the Indian subcontinent. All of this koftgari has been painstakingly applied and the top and underside of the grip both show pairs of feathered leaves from a cypress tree—an unusual design, but one that is repeated on a sosun pata sword dated to 1843 and illustrated in Elgood’s 2017 book about Rajput arms[1] (and also selected by him to adorn the rear cover). This is also executed with two shades of gold and fitted with a similarly high contrast dark wootz blade, the close comparisons suggest that the two weapons were made in the same workshop and period.