A strange object in my aunt's cabinet - pricker? awl?

[reynardo]

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This is sitting in my aunt's cabinet, alongside a couple of button hooks. The "blade" part is three-sided (like a leather-working awl) with a tiny hook at the end that could just be damage from being pressed against something hard. The metal of the blade feels like old-fashioned knife carbon-steel, and is very slightly rusted. The handle is either bone or ivory, and has that yellowing that one associates with very old age. There's a lump on the handle that feels like it might be very old dried-out leather, but is a brown dry lump.

My aunt had it from her mother, who had it from her mother, who had it from goodness knows where. We're in Australia, and going that far back you hit the Irish immigrants of the late 1800s.

Some people on whatwasthatone think it might be a bodger, which is a tool used for making rag rugs, but it doesn't have the indent along the shaft that seems essential to be one, nor does there seem to be any sign of where the clip part could have attached.

Any ideas?

Comments

[adelheide.livejournal.com]

Could be a seam ripper.

[baroquestar.livejournal.com]

I don't, but send it to discoverycentre@museum.vic.gov.au - we'll ask the costume chap or domestic tech curators.

[freyaw.livejournal.com]

Whatever it is, that lump looks approximately where one would want to put something to pad the finger one would use to brace the tool. If one were using it frequently, and had to put a finger there to use it most effectively, I could easily see that finger getting very sore, very quickly.

[freyaw.livejournal.com]

Having said that, the tool looks very similar to one I have somewhere around here, although mine has a handle made of something other than wood. I will look it out tomorrow, and tell you what I've used it for, and if it is sufficiently similar :-)

[xolo.livejournal.com]

I wonder if that's a sewing awl (for poking holes in leather) that's been damaged?

[delphipsmith]

Whatever it is, it looks evil as hell!