My experience is that the later the 1728, the more similar blades you find. For example, there are 4 different "Enrique Coel" formats, three of them common. Probably they are batches ordered in different years. In what I think are boca-de-caballos from the later XVII century, you do not find two blades alike, and blades from 50 years earlier or more are not rare.
Sometimes they do not have a real ricasso and it is just a tang. And sometimes there is a brass piece covering it.
At the end of XVIIth century there is fashion for flower scrolls at the sides of the blade channel. I suspect this is an Italian fashion and did not last long. Possibly they did anew on older blades too. In a simile, Victorians engraved often flowers on plain Georgian silverwares, for example.
Last edited by midelburgo; 2nd March 2023 at 02:23 PM.
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