Ivory Hulu Tajong
 

Greetings guys, I am a new member, an amateur collector of Keris and general blades. To start of, just wanted to share few pics of one of my favourite pieces, A Tajong Keris with Ivory Hilt. Those familiar may be able to recognise the handiwork.

I have read through the forum guides and instructions but do let me me know of any mistakes in my posting and the ones to come.

Good to make all of your acquaintances.

Regards.

This looks brand new. Are you sure it is ivory?
:shrug:

It is undoubtably current era work Marius. As our new member Kayoba (welcome to the forum btw) suggests, some people here my well recognize the artist from this work. Ivory is still worked in certain parts of the world and hopefully when it is it is obtained from legal sources.

Carved by Nik Rashideen possibly?

Welcome to the forums Kayoba. :)

Welcome to the Forum, Kayoba84 !
It is seldom possible to give an educated guess from a photo, but I am afraid Marius and David are right. All pieces of this keris are stilistically correct, and seems to be quite new. The material of the perfectly shaped hilt does not SEEM ivory, but plastic. To be sure, try with a hot needle.

The hot needle test does not work on cetain ivory immitations (bakelite?). I tried it myself on a plastic ivory immitation and it behaved exactly like ivory: was not affected by the hot needle at all.

So, in the end, I believe the best test remains a trained eye... and touch. :cool:

Try to look for specific signs of ivory: Schreger lines, minuscule cracks, minute variations of colouring, etc. Remember that ivory is a natural material and it is not perfectly homogeneous. Elephant ivory has also a specific translucence when highly polished (but good plastics also have it).

I suggest you remove the hilt and examine the pesi hole. It is there, inside the hole, where you may try the hot needle test.

"Resin" sounds nicer than "plastic"....
The pics are quite poor (sorry Kayoba) but I seem to distinguish some natural defects and cracks so I tend to believe that this recently made hilt is from elephant ivory. Furthermore it looks too finely carved for a resin hilt?
Regards :)

If like myself you do not hesitate to take some controlled risks with your krisses, gently drill or grind the peksi hole and smell it...
Regards :)

Exactly! Even mild polishing of ivory (with 7000 grit) will give away the specific "dentist" smell.
:)

While i do understand why someone might suspect this hilt is resin based upon the photos i personally would never make such a judgement given the evidence available. By that i mean that these photos are not good enough to make any definitive judgments. Like Rick i also suspected that Kayoba was alluding to Nik Rashideen as the possible carver. If that is so it sounds like he has some reason to believe so. I would love to hear how he came by this keris so that perhaps these questions can be answered with more than these inadequate photographs. :shrug: :)

Good day guys. Sorry for the late response, was away for the weekend. Rick and David both guessed correctly. My Name is Nik Aziz and the carver was Nik Rashidin, my late uncle.

As mentioned, I am an amateur collector, and i have in my possession a few pieces from his old collection, as well as a few new hilts and sapirs for my old blades crafted by his brother, Rashidee or Abe Dee as he is known amongst the older generation collectors.

Yes, the hilt is ivory, from my late uncle's old ivory stock. Will post pics of few othe pieces from my collection, and will try to post betterr pics from the piece I posted previously.

Nice looking Tajong with very nice carving.