Silver Keris

[A. G. Maisey]

Roland, it has been a fairly common practice for a very long time to add a figure at the gandhik of a keris, after that keris has been in use for an even longer time.

Incidentally, sometimes the addition of such a figure could be 100% legitimate. not some attempt to create a forgery in order to raise market value, in these cases the legitimacy related to a change in status or talismanic enhancement.

The way it is done is to weld a piece of pamor material onto the gandhik area of the keris, in older keris, this piece of material is sometimes taken from the front part of the blade. When the weld has been completed, the added piece of pamor is carved and the blade is refinished.

If the joint between the added piece of pamor and the blade is too obvious, the added figure is often covered with kinatah work. Sometimes we can detect and added piece of material because the grain runs in a different direction from the grain in the rest of the blade. However, this is never a certain tell that the material was added after the blade was already old, because sometimes there would be insufficient material at the gandhik prior to the blade being made from the original forging, so the smith would add a bit of extra material here before he began the cold work.

It is not particularly difficult to control weld heat to add a small piece of material to a blade. I have done it with both plain mechanical damascus and nickel damascus, and I was never even close in skill to the Javanese smiths of long ago.

[Roland_M]

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

Roland, it has been a fairly common practice for a very long time to add a figure at the gandhik of a keris, after that keris has been in use for an even longer time.

Thank you for your illustrative explanation, as always impressive illuminating for me.

So if the Ganesha was added later to the blade, it was done in a very skillfull way.

Roland