Maranao Sundang
 

15 wave blade 21 1/2" long
overall length 16 1/4"

A nice well-worn older kris with at least three unusual features. Who can determine/guess what they are?

Bill

Where do you find these things :). Very nice I see at the base of the blade there may have been a repair to the tang/pesi you know what I mean guys can anyone elaborate? Still a very sweet sword.

Congrats


Lew

Yep, looks like a new tang was keyed into the blade .
The stirrups don't match; the rear one is a later addition .
I'd guess the ratttan bands were a functional addition rather than aesthetic .
I'd be a bit concerned about the corrosion I see between the hilt and blade as this blade has had a serious etch .

It's quite lovely Bill .

Oh yes, did I mention the great pattern on the blade ?!? ;) :D

I also find the silver work to be unusual in design. I have never seen that "flame" pattern on the "crown" near the pommel and the reprosse work on the ferrule also looks unusual, though i can't really get a good look at it behind the rattan wrapping.

It's beautiful and interesting!
Steve

Question
 

I have one of these Kriss. not as fancy and with a straight blade. It has the same tang {replacement?} work and finer to my mind. What bothers me is this idea of a broken or replaced tang when there appears to absolutly no evidence of heavy use on the blade. Surely to damage the tang to the degree of replacing would reflect else where on the weapon :shrug: ?

A great many broken tangs might suggest rubbish weapons or this is a construction technique ;) . We do see them rather frequently? with undamaged blades?

A sharp blow from the side is about all I can think of that would cause tang failure . :shrug:

Hey Bill, while you've got your camera out ....
Make with some closeup piccys of the hilt trim willya ? :D

Also I'd like to hear your comments seeing as how you're the instigator of this thread . ;) :D

Rick

I like the unusual pamor, the exceptional condition of the katik (upper and lower) and the repair. (The other side is much smoother.)

Was this sword sold to you as an old kris? If it was, actually it is not. Old krises do not have varnished ratan strips if they were used as decorative bands. The handle head was also varnished.

This kris is recent due to the incorporations of different designs from different muslim communities. I am pretty sure that this is the kind of kris that is made in Lanao nowadays mostly for decoration and for a foreign collector.

I again disagree - the bands appear to have patina, and varnishing is not that uncommon on wood - not a recent creation. Also I have seen and handled the things coming out of Lanao in recent years - this does not match those at all and the blade construction is laminated whereas those from Lanao are monosteel.

Bill already said it's a Maranao sword. Maranaos are form Lanao.

Show me a photo of a kris collected years ago with a cherry-varnished handle head. I would love to see it since I believe there were cherry-colored tree/woods before, not red lawaan, that are extinct now and I also believed that resin and some gluey sap were used as varnish because some lumad kids still polish their nails using them.

I did have one years ago from a US vet that fought at the battle of Bud Bagsak in 1915 with the same red color pommel - I will have to look to see if I have a photo....

The narra tree is red on the deeper inside and often it's burl was used to make pommels......

Well Bill, i don't need to tell you that this is obviously an older kris and that it is certainly not "the kind of kris that is made in Lanao nowadays mostly for decoration and for a foreign collector". I think that any serious collector can see that as well. Judging the age of the kris based on the rattan bands is just ridiculous. It is the blade that one must judge the kris by, not the dress, which has obviously had some repairs and adjustments over the years. I doubt, for instance, that the rattan bands were original to this kris. The pommel my have very well been changed as well. Who knows. We can see that the back asang-asang is newer than the front one. This is the nature of a sword that has seen real use. It has different repairs and different adaptaions from different periods of it's life. It is interesting that the person who linked us to a website of a man standing in front of a wall full of decorative tourist punals which she claimed to be real kris thinks that this kris is a tourist piece. :rolleyes:

a maranao datu with a tourist's punyal? No comment.

I can go on and on with the designs of that maranao kris, but it's a waste of time. I find no academic merit in talking about it.

Even the patina is very telling. I would rather shut up though since I have no interest in antique collection and in knowing what's real and what is not.

In cultural preservation's point of view, selling fake or replica is fine. It preserves the real cultural artifacts within the community. It is also good to sell real ones to serious collectors so hopefully when they die they can donate their collection to a museum.

Fake or not, I don't really care.

old patina is darker and oftentimes greenish.

I can even see some welding traces.

Yeah, right... :rolleyes:

Hmmm... good idea. I guess you'll still a long way off, in old weapons appreciation. :cool:

Hmmm... I sense 'something' in your writing... I guess, if an authentic piece that is well-maintain outside the Phillipines, you'll still have your doubt with its authenticity. :shrug: .

Oh! btw Bill, that's a nice piece you have there, even with the repair. :)

can you not see the welding dots just above the katik on the second pic?

Now, compare that to the second kris, which I think is old and older.

Now tell me why it's old. Educate me.

also, study the surface of the blade. If it's grainier, then it's not older. Sharpening a snaky kris with no distinct design or pamor on both sides also makes the area near the center of the blade smooth. the blade just looks new to me.

don't tell me you want me to elaborate more on the handle which is the most problematic one.

Hello Miya,

This blade has been etched with ferric chloride which is more agressive than coconut water or other traditional etchants used in SE Asia.

I agree that a Moro warrior would have kept his kris in better polish and only lightly etched. However, long-time storage has taken its toll with some of the old blades (neglected by US veterans as well as by less blade-savy Filipinos) - so it's quite common to find genuine antique kris with various forms of corrosion; if gently cleaned rather than polished, the surface will look grainy.

Regards,
Kai

I am interested to know how the mindanao muslims long ago came up with Ferric Chloride. I did not know there was chemistry already in the Philippines then. I wish we were that scientifically advanced, Americans would not have slaughtered so many Moros in the name of manifest destiny.

radio shack?

hoy, he meant it was etch recently with ferric chloride.

here's a kris brought back in 1901
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...da433578-1.jpg
...and panabas in that same collection
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...r/acb9dca1.jpg

see? it's varnished

Ron,

Meant to say earlier that I am also glad to see you back! You have a lot to contribute.

ROTFLMAO !! :D :D
Great to see you're back Ron .. :)


Rick

hmmm...if only you would...:rolleyes:
If you have know interest in antique weapons you are definitely in the wrong place my dear. Stop wasting our time.
We are being trolled and it might be best to just ignore Baganing. She obviously knows nothing about antique weapons and would rather extol the virtues of modern decorative punals then come to any real understanding of real Moro weaponry.
Educate you Baganing? If only i thought you sincerely meant this. IMHO it would seem to be a waste of time and virtual space.

Something occurred to me while pondering these keyed tang replacements .
Let me propose a scenario (always fun :D ):

Captured weapons in the field; some may have been confiscated but some may also have been destroyed on the spot .
How do you make the kris unusable ?
Break the tang .

A small unit in the field could not afford to be weighed down with every confiscated weapon on a patrol or after a skirmish .

Just musing .......... :shrug:

grainy blades of older kris
 

I'm a beginner at this but I study very hard (which means I try to read everything you guys say about moro swords in this forum). I find the discussion on how old kris blade metal should look like, rather interesting. I was in the National Museum (Philippines) last week to look at the weapons display -- items from the 1904 St. Louis Exposition. Half of the kris swords on display have very shiny, no-pattern and polished-looking blades (new looking). The other half have darker gray blades with grainy patterns. All of them are pre-1904.

I know that the collection of Col. Harold Bandholtz was shown at the 1904 exposition .
Is this a different one ?

Have any of these blades etc. of this collection been repatriated to the Philippine Peoples in the past ?

I have a pair of the spears from that collection and they have a dark finish that shows the watering of the steel slightly .

Is this a new exhibit/display? I've not seen more than 5 or 6 of kris and barung that are part of the permanent displays at the Nat'l Museum in Manila?

1904 St. louis expo collection
 

The exhibit is new. It is in the groundfloor of the new Museum (the former Finance Building). There are over a hundred swords (moro, visayan, Luzon), dozens of spears, one round moro shield, bagobo shields, hats, Igorot weapons, war drums, and many more.

When we went there last week the doors of the exhibit room were closed as they were still fixing up part of it. However, we begged an officer of the museum to let us in -- which they graciously did.

They said the exhibit was open two/three months ago. But they want to fix the way they did the displays because right now visitors can reach in and touch the swords (there is glass partition but open on top) -- "and many do".

There is a smaller exhibit of weapons in the old museum building. That's the one with about 5 or 6 kris/barongs.

I suspect that many of these were sent back to the PI from vets here in the US and there was a custom back in the late 1800s to the mid 1900s of polishing up blades from any country to make them shiny. Many Nepalese kora were ruined this way by Victorians polishing out blade engravings. In the US collectors would do the same to PI/Moro pieces and even US Civil War swords. They would even throw away the scabbards of Moro and US Civil War pieces.:eek:

This is probably why you see so many shiny blades there in the museum. Also, once captured, the vets did not know to keep the blades in etched condition (if they werent polished),

for the life of me, i can't remember who told me this, but yeah, it's possible that the weapons on display might be bandholtz's. reason i said that, i was told that his descendants returned half (!) of his collection to the Philippine Govt not too long ago.
as far as polished and new looking blades, i wouldn't doubt that at all; here are some examples that was brought over by an american officer in 1900, and was literally frozen in time since once it got here, it was stored (pics taken by me):


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...r/9539cedc.jpg



oh, and wassup fellas?

Yes, that's exactly how many of the blades in the exhibit looked like -- polished blades like stainless steel. I guess they must been polished to make them look nice for the exposition and then kept all these years. That's why they look that way.

I also collect ivory santos and we know that 100 year-old ivory kept inside a glass virina can look new and without the yellowing we call patina. I guess for 100 year-old kris pommels, the same thing can be expected. Meaning they can look new if kept/stored all these years.

nacho,
not necessary polished, but rather it looked like that to begin with. reason i said that is because the same krises i posted above, there were pictures taken of the same swords by the original collector before it left the philippines, and it looked exactly the same, without any hint of being etched. here are some other ones. notice how shiny the one third from the top is:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...r/2da1e06c.jpg
wow, i would live to see that collection! i only saw the same five or six that was displayed in the old museum.
nacho, if you can take some pics and post it here, it would be most appreciated. i did try to take pics of the ones in the old museum but i wasn't allowed, lol..

Thanks for the heads-up on the exhibit. It is indeed a mix of the St. Luis Expo as well as some items already part of the museums collection. As it turns out it wont be open to the public for a while yet but can be viewed with appointment.

It's the most extensive local exhibit I've seen, unfortunately, almost all the moro weapons have had an over-enthusiastic cleaning. On some all patina has been removed in the quest to reveal bright metal. And all that have been cleaned bear evidence of having been cleaned with (gasp) a course grit belt grinder/sander. They could all have done with a bit more tlc than they recieved. I'm sure quite a few of them lost a touch of grace from their profiles from the less than delicate cleaning. A couple are also displayed with their handles on backwards and many are now missing asang-asang and handle crests, surely stripped from the swords long ago for the precious metals and ivory. A couple of the budjak spears appear to have once been "painted" silver as well. Thankfully there are only traces of the paint left now. It would be nice if the museum was open to some tips on how to better care and display their collection. Some ren wax should have been all that was done to the pieces. The visayan swords are in much better shape (and are of a good cross section of the vast variety) and there are a couple of unusual pieces there. Certainly worth the trip.

But yes, to answer your question, I am certain all but a couple of blades in the moro collection there would display a piled or laminated blade construction from non-homogenous steels given a proper cleaning and etch.

The exhibit of the 1904 specimens at the Phil National Museum has been taking some time to open. For some reason, prep work has been quite show. I learned about it a year ago and thereafter visited in Oct 2007 to chekout the on-and-off prep work. Noticed some errors in the display (e.g. inverted Tinggian shield, etc.) and humbly pointed it out to the staff who were glad to correct them. Indeed, the exhibit would be something worth visiting. By the way, I've been given the opportunity by the museum curator to photograph and document the weapons in the museum inventory and hope to be able to share (publish) these for everyone in the future. Meanwhile, I've been preparing to complete an appropriate photo studio/equipment set-up for this purpose :)

I forgot to mention ...

Paolo, I am optimistic that we in the private sector can do a lot to support the Phil National Museum (PNM) , especially in the area of inventory management, preservation and storage. A parallel goal I had in mind was to provide PNM the digitial images of its weapons inventory, which the institution can use for their electronic database. This is pro-bono work. As you could imagine, there are many other areas where we can help. We can probably work with the other museum volunteers to ren wax those blades :) I'll be the first one to donate 2 liters.

That's a good idea Nonoy.

I'm very glad to hear that at least half of the Bandholtz collection found its way home . :)

Bertha soon Ron . :D
Maybe a run East is in order . ;)

The middle kris you show pretty much throws out the pointy luks being a recent development theory . :D

Rick

Rick you make a good point, though most of the pointy luk ones I have seen were later. That is why other things must be taken into account in determining age as well which I see on this piece. One attribute alone is not enough of course.

Nonoy I look forward to more pictures.