Balinese Keris for consideration/comment

[A. G. Maisey]

OK. Ten minutes to spare before lunch.

Pamor.

Pamor is made by forge welding layers of contrasting material. This can be various types of iron, which is common in older blades, or in more recent blades by incorporating nickelous material along with ferric material to give a higher contrast.

The basic and most simple pamor pattern is wos wutah, which is layers of the contrasting materials.

By upsetting or manipulating the surface of the blade forging, after the pamor has been welded to the steel core, various patterns are created, which become clear when the blade is finished, examples being:- udan mas, bendo sagodo, wiji timun, & etc.

These are simple patterns that do not use a lot of material and do not take extreme skill nor extreme cost to create.

Other pamor patterns can be created by manipulation of the pamor forging in the fire, before it is welded to the steel core, but sometimes incorporating additional work after the steel core has been welded into place.

This manipulation in the forge involves twisting, re-folding, cutting and re-welding, in fact all sorts of variations on manipulating the material, usually at or close to weld heat, before the pamor billet is completed and before it is welded to the steel core.

These types of pamor require an extremely high degree of skill to create and use a lot of material through flaking of the billet during the process. Consequently these types of pamor are very much more expensive to create than the basic wos wutah, or the surface manipulated pamors that are all the result of further processing of wos wutah.

Wos wutah and the surface manipulated pamors are called "mlumah" pamors. Mlumah means "laying down", a reference to the layers of pamor laying in the same orientation as the core.

The other twisted, cut, refolded, rewelded complex pamors are called "miring" pamors, referring to the fact that the layers of pamor are set at an angle to the core.

"surface manipulated pamor" is not a derogatory term.