Hi Fernando,
No, that was 100% intuition, unencumbered by the thought process.
Well, not quite. I wasn't thinking Atlantic Cutlery, although if I wanted to fake it, that's where I'd go for the blade. I could easily believe that it was a European or American trade blade, mounted (somehow) on that handle.
No, with the closeups of the filemarks, it could easily be hand made. Or it could have been badly cleaned with sand paper or some similar scouring material. Since there are scratches on the handle, I suspect that might have happened.
Tim could be right: it could be older than a century. However, if it's been kept in a tropical climate, especially if it's been kept in a leather sheath, then the crap on the blade could build up pretty quickly. That might be true for the patina on the handle as well. I just don't think it's over a century old, mostly because it doesn't have a heavy rust patina and the handle isn't a corroded mass either.
Another thing that was bugging me was that it MIGHT be a short tanged blade brazed onto the brass handle, which to me seems very 20th century (as I said, this is unencumbered by the thought process).
An alternative suggestion would be that the handle was designed using lost wax, and then cast around the blade tang. I think they could have gotten away with doing that without melting the blade, but I'm not sure. The evidence favoring this interpretation is that the spots on the snake and the scallops on the handle look like something from a leather tool. These would be easy to make in a wax cast, harder to do in brass, and they don't look hand scratched to me, somehow. Again, leather stamps might argue for new world origins, I think. You can buy them from Tandy leather, but I don't know if they're readily available in central Africa...
Conogre could be right as well about Dahomey. The reason I suggested the African Diaspora is that it's pretty evidently a primarily religious item, and the twins-and-snake design certainly reaches into the New World. The crudity of the work also suggests that someone made it specially and personally, rather than hiring a professional smith. If it were made via lost wax, this is even more true, as wax is pretty easy to carve, and those figures are pretty crude.
More information on the formation of the hilt might help, at least to settle how it was made. Was it cast in one piece, or brazed together, for instance? You can tell that by determining how the blade joins the handle, and how the figures are attached to the handle.
I don't think we're going to settle the origins any time soon, unless someone knows an experienced santerista or voudoun who'd be willing to take some guesses about the origin and purpose of the item.
It's certainly neat though.
Fearn
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