Missing "gems"

[David]

Originally Posted by Paul B.

@ David: the base of your KM handle is for a great part gone/worn ?

I've never really thought about it before, but i do understand your question. It's fairly old ivory, so i suppose it is possible that there was damage and it was "repaired" by removal of the base. But when i have seen this before some other material is usually used as a replacement for the worn out part.
This is a rather small example of this style of hilt and is on a patrem. So it his possible it was always this way or perhaps shortened to proportionally fit the the blade better. But if you look in Detelf's examples in post #8, the one in the middle also doesn't have the normal base to the hilt.
Alan, do you know anything more about this one?