12-15thC ribbed Laburnum eating knife

This 12-15thC simple eating knife is the kind of knife that most people would have had most of the time. Quite simply, people were poor and couldn’t afford a fancy knife, when something straightforward would do the same job. To that end, this would be perfectly acceptable for very low people in the 15th and even 16thC too. This particular example is copied from a River Thames find. It features a turned boxwood laburnum grip and a strong single edged blade and is housed in a naturally tanned red leather sheath with no decoration. Overall length 18cm/7” Blade length 8.5cm/3.5” Grip length 9cm/3.5”