Help me identify an asiatic bow

Stephen Selby · Post by **Stephen Selby** » Sat Mar 21, 2009 10:02 am

As far as I know, the British Museum on the Museum with specialized agencies, there is a lot of Chinese are also excellent long-term restoration experts employed there. Repair of cultural relics are now a very popular professional disciplines, by the museum and heritage experts favor, of course, repair of cultural relics before they will conduct a comprehensive and detailed heritage assessment, including risk assessment, as you say, once the repair is wrong, it is irreversible.

The point that Jack is making, and I agree, is that museums will conserve old bows which include a lot of bad, pre-1960s 'restoration'. Museums will not remove bad restoration, they just keep it stable. It is not the same as saying that the restorers are not experts (I agree with you that they are.) The are just very cautious.

jack farrell · Post by **jack farrell** » Sat Mar 21, 2009 1:20 pm

Certainly no offense intended whatever. I was only stating that the main focus in the west is to stabilize artifacts and not to return them to an original condition. That there are many expert preservationists among the Chinese, I have no doubt.

Please allow that there is always something lost in translation. It is good that we all contribute freely. Jack

Chiron · Post by **Chiron** » Sat Mar 21, 2009 3:49 pm

[/quote]

The point that Jack is making, and I agree, is that museums will conserve old bows which include a lot of bad, pre-1960s 'restoration'. Museums will not remove bad restoration, they just keep it stable. It is not the same as saying that the restorers are not experts (I agree with you that they are.) The are just very cautious.[/quote]

Stephen Selby

At our museum to see a large number of the original Broken bronze ware, porcelain, wood, calligraphy and painting, sculpture was on display after restoration, bow and arrow has not been repaired. Is not the museum do not want to fix it, but at present in this area can be said to be empty, there is the ability of experts to repair the ancient bow and arrow is very scarce. Can also say that this is worthy of an entirely new field of study to explore and go everyone.
________
Chiron

Adam Karpowicz · Post by **Adam Karpowicz** » Sat Mar 21, 2009 8:38 pm

The knowledge of ancient bowyery is generally very poor among the curatorial staff and the conservation specialists in the musems. Under the circumstances, it is best if the bows are only preserved and stabilized with no further intervention.

Adam

robno · Post by **robno** » Mon Jun 29, 2009 1:48 pm

There is, in fact, a bit of news to add to this discussion. A Swedish bowyer (on a Swedish forum known as Melegari) visited Skokloster and took the picture found below after I had asked him to have a look at the one discussed here. Many thanks to him for that!

I leave to you with more experience to say if there has or has not been a bridge there (with my very limited experience it certainly looks like it)

The picture:

Bede · Post by **Bede** » Tue Jun 30, 2009 2:01 am

The bare patch is in the right place for a Qing style string bridge. When this is taken into account with the shape and size of the bow and the way the tips are covered, I think that a Qing origin is the most likely. However, the bow may have passed through several hands in its working life before it reached the museum.

Stephen Selby · Post by **Stephen Selby** » Thu Jul 02, 2009 6:53 am

The rattan edging where the horn is glued down is a give-away for a Chinese, Manchu style bow. I haven't seen other designs that did that. The Turks were importing huge amounts of products from China in the 17-18th Century - tea, blue and white porcelain and weapons.

S

jkekoni · Post by **jkekoni** » Thu Jul 23, 2009 12:35 am

Kalmyk design.

I am looking and the ears. I think they are laminated or kerfed and glued to bend without V-splice.

What do you think?

Bede · Post by **Bede** » Thu Jul 23, 2009 12:42 am

What you are seeing is probably an illusion caused by the positioning of the birch bark overlays covering the tips.

mongolianarcher · Post by **mongolianarcher** » Thu Jul 23, 2009 2:22 am

Alam ed Din, Adnan wrote:I think this is a bow of Kalmyk design,( .. ..Bede - not all the Thorghuts went back to Dzungaria with Ubashi Khan, many stayed in the area known today as Kalmykia) - but this is an assumption - since they where the close neighbours though not "friends" of Crim Tatars and Nogais that served in the Battle of Mohacs, perhaps a number of Kalmyks/Oirats changed side and served in the Turkish army's Tatar battalions, or Tatars may even have traded/captured the bows from the Kalmyks and used them?

The picture that you posted is a kalmyks bow or tatar?
Sorry for my ignorance, but the discussion is a little confusing.

Bede · Post by **Bede** » Thu Jul 23, 2009 7:45 am

Even though the caption says Kalmyk Archer, I think that the shape of the bow and most of the costume is imaginary. Kalmyks in the 19th century wore distinctive fur hats which this is a distant relative. The coat is an interpretation rather than a representation. The bow is shown partly drawn but the archer is shown as small in comparison.

While there are a lot of good 18th to 19th century European depictions of Asian costume and equipment, there are unfortunately many more poor ones produced for general consumption.

A really interesting engraving of the painter, Sir William Allan, dressed as a Circassian chieftain shows the quality of ethnographic depiction that was available. Almost all of the equipment of this type has survived and one can compare the 1815 engraving with the real objects and see how good the artist could be. For these reasons, his painting of Bashkirs should be taken as a serious representation of real equipment. http://www.hermitagemuseum.org/fcgi-bin ... From=simil

When you look at the depiction of the bows here, you can see where the bow in the Kalmyk engraving originated. The difference is that the engraving has a guess at the shape of the drawn bow rather than a depiction of the shape.

If you look at http://www.circassianworld.com/A_Circassian_Chief.html you can see the type of bows that were were being depicted both in the engraving form and the finished painting.

These bows, which are closely related to Crimean Tatar bows, may represent the late Mongol style of bow that preceded the Manchu Qing style of bow that is shown in the early part of this thread. The Torghuts may or may not have brought a variation of this with them. There certainly seems to be a family resemblance between these bows in contrast to the Qing bows.

jack farrell · Post by **jack farrell** » Thu Jul 23, 2009 12:03 pm

Lucas; I find the illustration to be an excellent representation of a Buryat style bow. Buryats are Turkic peoples of Southern Siberia. His clothes are good. -j-

mongolianarcher · Post by **mongolianarcher** » Fri Jul 24, 2009 4:01 am

Bede wrote:Even though the caption says Kalmyk Archer, I think that the shape of the bow and most of the costume is imaginary. Kalmyks in the 19th century wore distinctive fur hats which this is a distant relative. The coat is an interpretation rather than a representation. The bow is shown partly drawn but the archer is shown as small in comparison.

While there are a lot of good 18th to 19th century European depictions of Asian costume and equipment, there are unfortunately many more poor ones produced for general consumption.

A really interesting engraving of the painter, Sir William Allan, dressed as a Circassian chieftain shows the quality of ethnographic depiction that was available. Almost all of the equipment of this type has survived and one can compare the 1815 engraving with the real objects and see how good the artist could be. For these reasons, his painting of Bashkirs should be taken as a serious representation of real equipment. http://www.hermitagemuseum.org/fcgi-bin ... From=simil

When you look at the depiction of the bows here, you can see where the bow in the Kalmyk engraving originated. The difference is that the engraving has a guess at the shape of the drawn bow rather than a depiction of the shape.

If you look at http://www.circassianworld.com/A_Circassian_Chief.html you can see the type of bows that were were being depicted both in the engraving form and the finished painting.

These bows, which are closely related to Crimean Tatar bows, may represent the late Mongol style of bow that preceded the Manchu Qing style of bow that is shown in the early part of this thread. The Torghuts may or may not have brought a variation of this with them. There certainly seems to be a family resemblance between these bows in contrast to the Qing bows.

A bowyer that lives near me said that some late mongol, pre qing period bow used looked like a crimean tatar, with a arrow plate, but with longer siyas. Can this possibly be true???

jack farrell · Post by **jack farrell** » Fri Jul 24, 2009 3:20 pm

There were pictures posted here of Buryat bows by Taras, who authored the article her on ATARN. He shows his old bow strung. Dusan posted a photo of a Buryat bow from the Talas armory museum. It would be interesting to know how that bow arrived there. There was also the article in Primitive archer about an old Buryat bow.

The features of this bow are the lack of a Kasan, the ridged, rigid section below the ear. The ear features a bone belly plate abutting the horn belly slat. (The Xining Mongol bow has a butt joint at the horn plate in this location) Besides this there are horn side plates on the ears. There is also a pillow bridge in the manner of Qing bows.

To my thinking it is a cousin of the Manchurian bow. It probably lacks a splice at the ear but the ear plates hark back to Hunnic type bows. It may have been too cold in the country to intensify pressure on the limb that a kasan would have caused. Manchurian bows also lack a kasan. The pillow bridge is common to very few bow types. The length of the bow may also be in response to the cold climate.

Lucas, what do you mean by arrow plate?

mongolianarcher · Post by **mongolianarcher** » Sat Jul 25, 2009 12:26 am

Sorry, I ment a string plate.