Hello David, Maybe it's the photos or maybe it's my eyes but I really don't see that much patina on the hilt. I agree that it would be much easier to make a judgment call on this piece if one had the knife in hand. It does have a bit of cracking but that could have been caused by poor storage in a hot dry attic as easily as by age shrinkage or rust build-up on the tang. Stylized might have been a better word to describe the carving than poor but I still think that the hilt is from WWII or later for the same reason. The style just does not match up to any of the true older examples that I have seen so far but, does for later pieces.
