A recycled smallsword shell-guard ?
 

Hi everyone !

I wanted to share this with you, as I'm pretty sure an old piece of furniture at my new workplace has two halves of a smallsword shell-guard recycled as keyhole plates.


I'm thinking French (maybe English ?), around 1780, what do you think ? Any similar example you know of ?

Anyway, I thought it was a pretty funny and clever reuse of weapon parts (the piece of furniture itself is most likely from the XIXth century).

I think you are right! Good eyes!

Ditto!

Wow, most people would have seen nothing! Interesting :)

Thanks ! This is coming from a rather poor, mountainous region, so I guess people just decided to reuse that nice, but otherwise useless, metal plate to fancy up their furniture. I had never seen anything like this before though !

Indeed this is a worthy thread, but....
If this "guard" was found in East Asia, it would be classified as a a "Namban tsuba" of some kind.
Peter