In my previous post, I neglected to respond to Fernando's well placed note on observing on swords such as this much agreed, very nice example posted by Jean Luc....in that our focus on the markings on the blade may very well be quite independent of the circumstances of the hilt.
Swords, particularly rapiers, were often refurbished numbers of times in their working lives, and these instances may have been to repair a damaged sword; to refurbish a blade with a new hilt aligned with changes in style or fashion. ..these were not only weapons, but status oriented accoutrements.
While the most common reason, other than damage or change in fashion, may have been a heirloom blade, there are numbers of cases where old hilts much more vintage than the blade are used. These cases are seen in a number of the swords in the Wallace Collection (Mann, 1962), where an 18th century German blade is mounted on a 17th century Spanish hilt etc.
When AVB Norman wrote his "The Rapier and Small Sword" in 1980, he noted that his focus was on the styling of the hilts, as blades were mostly a matter of trade and various acquisition while hilts were local and personal preference. He innovatively used portraiture primarily and some other art to establish the period and general locations for various hilt styles, and much in the same manner attended to pommels. The pommels are another hilt element subject to variation and acquisition often separate from its other components.
Therefore our observations on this blade may well be entirely incongruent with the hilt, thus provenance for the separate components might be notably different, even from different countries and periods.
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