A GOLD-DAMASCENED (KOFTGARI) STEEL TULWAR (SWORD)
Northern India, 18th - early 19th century

With a curved single-edged watered steel blade stamped with maker's mark with two regardant dentate crescents with three dots on each terminal, with thicker tip, the steel hilt once completely covered in gold (koftgari) and designed with the typical T-shaped forte with bulbous terminals, with a flattened grip convex to the sides and enhanced with rosette medallions in relief, at the top an everted decorative disc with a hemispherical pommel with bulbous finial all covered in gold, 88cm long.