Ancestor hilt or tourist piece?

A. G. Maisey · 14th September 2010, 01:02 AM

Yes, I agree 100% with these remarks Kai.

The number of times I have seen mix & match keris goes beyond counting. All sorts of reasons can be identified for this, it can be a collector or dealer outside S.E.Asia, a collector or dealer within S.E.Asia, or somebody, somewhere in a keris bearing area of S.E.Asia who is outside of the direct influence of a particular keris style.

Even in Central Jawa, although we will see the classic Surakarta/Jogjakarta styles predominate in cities and towns, when you go into the villages you can find a lot of variation from the classic styles.

A couple of years ago I was shown a keris that had authentic old, provenance dating it to pre-WWII in coastal North Sumatra, and as a pusaka keris, that is, as a keris that had been identified as a family keris for an extended period of time. It was a complete hodge-podge of mostly very inferior parts, I forget the actual combination, but it was something like Bugis blade, home made wrongko with truncated Jawa pendok, rubbish Jawa mendak and some sort of poor quality ivory hilt, and it was quite small. If you saw it in a shop you'd write it off as junk, however, for the owner, in pre-WWII North Sumatra, who was a poor fisherman, it was the most important and valuable thing he owned.

Not all keris are wonderful works of art.

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14th September 2010, 01:02 AM	#7
A. G. Maisey Member Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 6,991	Yes, I agree 100% with these remarks Kai. The number of times I have seen mix & match keris goes beyond counting. All sorts of reasons can be identified for this, it can be a collector or dealer outside S.E.Asia, a collector or dealer within S.E.Asia, or somebody, somewhere in a keris bearing area of S.E.Asia who is outside of the direct influence of a particular keris style. Even in Central Jawa, although we will see the classic Surakarta/Jogjakarta styles predominate in cities and towns, when you go into the villages you can find a lot of variation from the classic styles. A couple of years ago I was shown a keris that had authentic old, provenance dating it to pre-WWII in coastal North Sumatra, and as a pusaka keris, that is, as a keris that had been identified as a family keris for an extended period of time. It was a complete hodge-podge of mostly very inferior parts, I forget the actual combination, but it was something like Bugis blade, home made wrongko with truncated Jawa pendok, rubbish Jawa mendak and some sort of poor quality ivory hilt, and it was quite small. If you saw it in a shop you'd write it off as junk, however, for the owner, in pre-WWII North Sumatra, who was a poor fisherman, it was the most important and valuable thing he owned. Not all keris are wonderful works of art.