[werecow]

The "springs" are a typical Ottoman scabbard stitch. From SBG forum:

That scabbard stitching thing: It used to be called ,, Türkenleiter '' in old German language texts.
Think I found the term on an Austrian site dealing with old Austrian texts.
Which makes sense as they had to deal with Ottoman Turks quite a lot.
The term was explained as: Turkish Ladder, referring to a ladder to Heaven (or Hell, depending on where one stands in a conflict),
The spokes of said ladder are the stitches, guiding the souls of fallen Turks to the ,,Other Side''.
It is not known (I think at this point) where the term originated, on the Christian side or the Turkish.
It can be seen on many a French (private order) scabbard dating from after the Napoleonic adventure in Egypt, but also here and there on German and British scabbards from that period and later. Never cought on as a wide spread fashion though, more like an extra.

and

So according to Osman, who also asked a historian friend of his because he wanted to be sure about a couple things (the names of the symbols as well in the koftgiri) the Ottomans had no specific name for the style, but it was not adopted until the 1790's and only continued until the early 19th century and was a quite rare style reserved for the highest quality scabbards. Interesting that the French and Germans would adopt it in a limited fashion, Ottoman fashion seemed to have a huge effect on the West whenever encountered, I'm sure it was considered exotic.