Podadora and tallant (pruning hooks)

> Note: podall is not registered in Mallorca in the DCVB (it is from Catalonia and Valencia). In Mallorca the curved pruning knife is the pruner. The slug remains.

What is

• Pruner: curved blade knife for pruning (DCVB; Mallorcan pronunciation collected).
• Tallant: wide cutting blade by blow. In Mallorca, especially the Tallant de carnisser from Matances: wide blade (triangular, square or half-moon) for cutting meat and bone.

How is

• Pruner: curved hook-type blade, interior edge, wooden handle.
• Kitchen tallant: wide, heavy blade, short handle.
• Other tallants (DCVB): the stonecutter (two wide blades joined at the eye, to reduce stone), the bater, and the cutting parts of plows and threshing floors.

How is fa

• Forging and sharpening: ferro forjat , ganiveteria .
• Active knife workshop in the Mallorcan way: Ganivets Campins (Consell) (if they make pruners or tallants: check).

Com s'usa

• Pruner: pruning vine, olive, carob and almond trees; sucker cutting. It is worn on the belt ("on the belt you have a pruner", an old quote from the DCVB).
• Tallant: matances (November-February): cutting up the pig carcass. Alcover describes it: men and women "amb taiants i guinavetes" cutting up pieces.

Vocabulary

• podadora: curved pruning knife (Mall.).
• podall: the same in Catalonia; not Mallorcan.
• tallant / taiant: striking blade; in Mallorca, as a butcher.
• guinaveta / ganiveta: matances knife.
• matances: slaughter of the pig.
• tallant (de picapedrer): two-bladed tool for chipping away at stone.

History

• 13th century: Llull names the pruner among the farmer's tools (Arbre de Sciència).
• 1467: "two tallants manegats per fer pedres debombarda" (Aguiló, DCVB): tallant of a stonemason.
• 19th-20th centuries: Salvà (Majorcan poet) writes “tays de fauç y pruner”.
• Today: the pruning shears replace the pruner; Tallant is still in the matances (per verify current use).

On veure'n

• Museum of Mallorca, ethnological section (Wall) .
• Matances festivals and sobrassada fairs (Campos and other towns).

Why is it design

• Curve = lever: the pruner pulls the branch towards the edge.
• Weight as a tool: the tallant cuts by inertia, not by arm strength.
• One word, many trades: the same principle (broad blade + blow) in butcher, stonemason and cooper.

For the project

• Collection "knives of the agricultural year": pruner (winter), falç (summer), tallant (matances), trinxet (always in the pocket). With Ganivets Campins.

Sources

• dcvb.iec.cat/results.asp?Word=podall
• dcvb.iec.cat/results.asp?Word=podadora
• dcvb.iec.cat/results.asp?Word=tallant

Working text from the Disseny Indígena knowledge base, machine-translated from Spanish.

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