(said to be) newly found old keris
 

Hi

I am opening another discussion thread here, all pictures were posted using permission of the owner.

firstly, I am not offering anything for sale, nor I wanted to buy the blade. It's solely for educative purposes, so any opinion, even harsh one are welcome

as we all knew that in keris world, (sadly) artificial ageing is a common practice

so the story goes that this was found during a dig in irrigation ditch - and later cleaned and said to be Singosari / kabudhan era

the center ones are too badly damaged to be restored

enjoy

more pics

Very good restoration job!

These three were found together in the same place?

Very interesting how there is a vestigeal mendak fused to the pesi, but there are are no traces of vestigeal hilts... just to mention one of the things I find suspicious.

To me these blades have been artificially aged. :cool:

But maybe I am too paranoid. :shrug:

Marius, what do you mean by "vestigial" hilts. This style of keris did not have intrinsic iron hilts like keris sajen. The hilts on this type of keris would most likely be wood which would not survive long periods of time (centuries) buried in the earth. :shrug:
That doesn't remove all suspicion from these pieces, but i cannot see the lack of any remains of the hilt as cause for that suspicion. ;)

By vestigial hilts, I meant some vestiges of old wooden hilts. Generally even rotten wood leaves some traces and definitely unevenly corroded pesis. Moreover, some hardwoods are very resistant to rotting and can survive hundreds of years in soil. :cool:

However, it is rather difficult to judge without having them in the hand... and enen then it may be hard to tell for sure. :shrug:

Old or artificially aged? This type of blade is a typical dilemma for the collectors and they are not sold cheap. Personally I would vote for artificially aged as the corrosion is quite uniform but would like to hear Alan's opinion. :)
If I am correct, the maker did his best to lure us (square pesi, metuk, blade shape, ricikan, etc).
Regards

During the 1970's and 1980's, in Solo, keris buda were pretty scarce.

Sometimes years would pass before I heard of, or saw a KB that had recently surfaced.

In recent years newly discovered KB's seem to pop up with rather boring regularity.

According to what I have been told by people I have very good reason to trust, KB's were sometimes found in company with other objects or value, for example bronze bells, bronze finials, gold jewellery, even iron tools. This finding of what could probably be called "troves" generated the idea that these items of value were intentionally buried in order to avoid them being stolen by bandits. It is established historical fact that bands of bandits roamed the rural areas of Jawa until not all that long ago, perhaps in one sense, they still do. In any case, the people who buried these objects did not return to release them from the earth, and people from a later time found them, washed them off, in the case of bronze they nearly always destroyed value of the object by polishing or by scratching and testing to see if it was gold.

In about 1985 one of the dealers in Solo had a box of iron tools mixed with sundry bronze objects, that had been found in a newly developed rice field. I bought most of the contents of this box, no keris or weapons were included. The best of the tools and bronze objects I cleaned and still have, the iron that was past restoration I welded into a billet which was subsequently stolen.

During the 1960's and probably into the early 1970's, smiths who lived in a village near Jogja used to source some of their material from a burial site that dated from a much earlier time.

There is a belief that after Islam had established a foothold in Jawa and had begun its process of domination, some people buried objects that were believed to hold a strong association with the previous Hindu-Buddhist belief system.

Sometimes a volcanic eruption would bury a house, or a village , and this would result in objects being buried in ash or in mud.

So objects were buried, for a number of reasons. The deposits that adhere to these objects vary accordingly. When a person with scant knowledge of antiquities and the parameters that govern their value finds these buried objects they frequently try to clean the objects up a bit, prior to selling in a local market, thus if the material that adheres to an object at the time of discovery, is still there at the time it is sold to a dealer, this does raise questions in my mind.

In respect of the three objects under discussion here, I regret I am unable to provide any opinion at all. I do note that the perceived colour of the deposit adhering to the bottom object is a different colour to the colour of the other two objects, this different, slightly yellowish colour seems to indicate the presence of sulphur, which raises further questions.


An interesting set of photographs, and perhaps an update to records.

If I am not wrong, one keris only has been cleaned, and in my humble opinion the item does not seem so old, considering the very bad conditions of the other two. If, as Alan suggests, some sulphur was present on its surface, the conditions of this keris should be the worst. (sulphur is very corrosive on iron)
It would be interesting to clean the other two kerises, even if little iron is left, but we will never know for sure if the three kerises have been buried at the same time, even if they have been found in the same location, one close to the others.

as for me, I believed that all three are artificially aged ...

though cannot be sure until I held it personally, I still tend to think it was not that old

Thank you, Alan ... for the beautiful and descriptive insight. I remembered years ago you said to me that keris are buried simply to protect it from thieves since it was considered precious

and a good eye on the traces of sulphur there.

something like this, Alan ?

several other trinkets found with the keris has been sold by the founder


Donny

yes, from the 3, only 2 are cleaned, one is way too damaged and salvaged only for the iron.
Donny

No, nothing at all like these things Donny.

The things I have seen that have been buried have been genuine old tools, genuine old bronze bells, bronze parts of genuine old finials.

Definitely not the sort of stuff you have shown in the foto.

The sort of thing shown here:-

http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showth...ight=majapahit

many thanks, Alan
talking with you always open my horizon a step further !

Donny