3 pellet wood Keris with beefy blades

A. G. Maisey · 1st July 2017, 10:23 PM

These look like nice old keris. All are pretty pedestrian quality, the sort of thing an ordinary person would have owned, but they seem to be well preserved and nicely representative.

I would place all the dress as East Jawa. Some would want to put it into Madura, others would run it a little to the west of Surabaya. To my mind this is not a sensible thing to do because this entire area overlaps, there really are no hard & fast boundaries. Madura should always be thought of as East Jawa, just a different part of East Jawa, same as we differentiate between different areas in Central Jawa.

The big beefy blade displays a mixture of pure Tuban and Tuban-Pajajaran characteristics. In essence it is a North Coast blade and fits nicely into the Tuban framework. It would be a good idea to get rid of the ivory? metuk and replace it with a North Coast/Maduro mendak.

The other two blades I would be inclined to place into East Jawa/Maduro. The keris with the red stone mendak displays Mataram influence but I most sincerely doubt it is Mataram, I would need to handle it to form a firm opinion.

The mendak with red plastic? stone should be got rid of and replaced with a recent mendak.

Incidentally, its "pelet", not "pellet".

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1st July 2017, 10:23 PM	#5
A. G. Maisey Member Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 7,048	These look like nice old keris. All are pretty pedestrian quality, the sort of thing an ordinary person would have owned, but they seem to be well preserved and nicely representative. I would place all the dress as East Jawa. Some would want to put it into Madura, others would run it a little to the west of Surabaya. To my mind this is not a sensible thing to do because this entire area overlaps, there really are no hard & fast boundaries. Madura should always be thought of as East Jawa, just a different part of East Jawa, same as we differentiate between different areas in Central Jawa. The big beefy blade displays a mixture of pure Tuban and Tuban-Pajajaran characteristics. In essence it is a North Coast blade and fits nicely into the Tuban framework. It would be a good idea to get rid of the ivory? metuk and replace it with a North Coast/Maduro mendak. The other two blades I would be inclined to place into East Jawa/Maduro. The keris with the red stone mendak displays Mataram influence but I most sincerely doubt it is Mataram, I would need to handle it to form a firm opinion. The mendak with red plastic? stone should be got rid of and replaced with a recent mendak. Incidentally, its "pelet", not "pellet".