Interesting big sized javanese keris

[Gustav]

Dear All,

I acquired this keris slightly more the a month ago. The pics from seller (Netherlands) were as they mostly are, but I was absolutely aware of that it would be a low-average quality keris, yet something very interesting to study, learn about keris. The money was also not big, so I have it now.

What attracted my attention was the rather substantial body of the blade. If we look at the keris from old european collections (17. cent.) in Karsten Sejr Jensen's book or Krisdisk, the javanese blades there are often very substantial in width and length.

(Of course my blade very possibly is younger then 17. cent.)

It came in an older East-Javanese wrongko, which is original to the blade; and it has a not recent mendak and nice East-Javanese hilt. Gandar is missing.

Length of the blade: 41,5 cm, width of the gonjo: 9,4 cm, width at the third luk: 3 cm.

It has full ricikan: blumbangan, two sogokan, kembang kacang with jenggot, jalen, one lambe gajah, tikel alis, kruwingan, greneng with ron dha nunut, ada-ada till the tip of the luk 13 blade.

The gonjo is Sebit Ron, Sebit Ron Tal.

The blade is very substantial but feels light for this size. Pamor is a lush wos wutah (probably called Pedharingan Kebak ?).

There is a great number of shortcomings, some caused by working process, some by wear:

1) greneng is not evenly cut, dha's doesn't have the same size and form;

2) the biggest fault, probably evident from the first day, is the loss of a layer at the Sirah Cecak of gonjo. It was caused by the obstacle, the smith choosed to forge a gonjo with horizontal layers (some sort of gonjo with pamor Mas Kemambang probably?), and not vertical, which would probably give the same wos wutah pamor (?) and be the aesthetically more satisfying and more common version.

The horizontal layers wasn't even and perfectly horizontal, and probably due to bad forging work or metal quality there is a loss of a part of the last layer and a gap;

3) kembang kacang has been pushed in to the gandhik, jenggot is almost completely gone;