Latest takouba for comment

[Lee]

A very nice takouba indeed! I believe that your assessment in dating is correct, the mounts from the last half century and a blade from the 19th century or even earlier. It is not at all uncommon to find old heirloom blades in much more recent mounts within this culture. I do not know about today, but from personal observations during travel to the area a couple of decades ago, these were still routinely being worn on a daily basis in places. Some of my oldest takouba blades are in the newest mounts in my collection and this should not be unexpected wherever such an artifact actively remains in use.

(I presented a number of the examples I collected with similar engraved motifs back in the UBB days on this forum and you can still find those threads by using the archive.org way-back-when-machine. The originals remain locked down because of malicious corruption and are awaiting manual repair and restoration.)