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As to the buyer.... Well, people collect what they want and there is no accounting for the taste. I personally would very much prefer a modest yataghan from the Siege of Vienna to a lavish contemporary one..."
Great job!
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There is a well established custom knife making culture in America most of which makes traditional hunting or military knives. In the last ten or twelve years custom makers mastered the process of Damascus pattern manufacture. Others have produced wootz. The University of Illinois at Urbana has a well developed colony of blacksmiths who do fine pattern or wootz ironwork. It may be part of a metallurgical course.
Dr. Figiel told me some years ago that he was impressed by the work of the Pendray organization in their experimentation with wootz pattern alloys. However I believe they were studying industrial applications and wear qualities.
As is obvious there is also a well developed commercial market for fantasy knives which is a low class garish market. In the most dignified form it will provide weapons for movies. What use there is for the rest of it (look at eBay) I don't know. In the case at hand it is possible for a wealthy client to merge honest historical artistry in metalwork with his own personal fantasies.
Imagine such a party in his custom octagon shaped play room with huge plasma wall screens on each wall playing the battle scenes from the
Three Hundred defending the pass against the Persians. There he is, naked with high black leather boots, with embroidered sash holding his gold and coral inlaid scabbard, slashing and chopping at the oncoming hordes and screaming battle commands and hurling oaths. At the end of the movie all the screens have been chopped into slivers of glass and our hero is laying exhausted and sweating on the floor with his precious yataghan cradled in his arms. Upon recovery he will consult his catalogs of weapons collections, comission a new blade and order eight new wall screens.
This sort of clientele will keep the high end edged weapons market alive just as it did over the centuries - the difference being they didn't
need wall screens in olden times.