Featured Old bamboo spear brooch

One of the more unusual oddities I have acquired.
I have googled and all I come up with are savage looking spears!. Not that this isn’t capable of causing a fairly serious injury if worn without due care and attention. It could be the first ‘death by brooch’ as both the pin and the spear are very sharp.
At first I wondered if it was meant to represent a pen but I don’t think so now.
At 9cm long it could do some damage.
The clasp looks pretty old to me but any ideas why this would be a suitable theme for a pin, if it is indeed of some age or masquerading or if it’s just ill advised tourist tat, where did it originate?
Thanks for looking.

 

What changed your mind? It looks more like a pen than like a spear to me.

 

It’s so long!. Maybe looking at the end of it it is a pen?. Is it meant to represent bamboo? Off to research if bamboo pens were a thing!

 

19th C and possibly early at that. I suspect it's some kind of writer's society.

 

Sounds like the start of a romantic historical novel!.
Now I just need to find a link to Keats, Byron and Shelley and my fortune is made .
When you say

What tells you that date?

 

The way its made - that enamel on iron, as well as the style of the pen which looks Georgian, unless it's harking back. The hinge and clasp loook early too.

 

You certainly have the for finding oddities
(Oohh that Tokyo poo locket...)

 

Nostalgie de la poo?

 

Only de la Tokyo poo

 

The pride of my high quality collection I’ll have you know!

 

Not sure if that’s a good thing or not!. At least I don’t have to fight the precious metal hunters for my finds.
I’m currently hatching a tall story where Byron, Keats and Shelley all wore one of these brooches in their writers society as OBB suggested.

 

Could be that silver pens modeled to look like bamboo were a thing.

 

Yup, they were. Based on Chinese pens.