Ideas?

[Tim Simmons]

While watching TV, I came across this. Perhaps especially when thinking of the material {marine ivory?} you have something a little more special than a Keris handle. From the NY Met. Certainly the product of a specialist?

[Pusaka]

To me the posture looks the same as seen on many keris Sajen, a figure bent forward with hands crossed over the heart or navel.

[Tim Simmons]

Exploring the staff or lime stick finial idea from the Melanesian and possibly Micronesian world. I can find at least half a dozen or so pictures of lime sticks and art works that reflect this pose. All carved in wood none as fine and as prestigious as the ivory item in question. Ivory bird heads. However this is drifting off discussing of weapons. I just have a gut feeling that Alan has something very nice indeed.

[Pusaka]

I remember reading a description of one of the early or first accounts of keris in Indonesia. The observer said that the men had straight bladed daggers with bone/ivory handles carved in the form of a human figure…..dose anyone remember reading this, is probably in the archives of this forum somewhere.

Could this be one?

[Tim Simmons]

I am almost certain that this is something rather special from Melanesian Islands. Just google Melanesian ritual headbands to see I am not making it up. This picture is of one from Vanuatu. You say you got it in Jawa, the Indonesians do occupy a portion of the aforementioned. The evidence may be circumspection in a court of law but that does not mean it is not what happened.

[A. G. Maisey]

This is interesting speculation, Tim, but you are working from a photographic image, I am working from the actual object in my hand, and a knowledge base that can call upon thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of keris hilts, handles of pelecoks, handles of other various small Indonesian implements and related artifacts.

I also have some limited experience in Melanesian and Pacific art.

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that this carving is a keris hilt. I think it is most probably from Jawa, but I would not rule out Madura and Sumatra, or one of the small islands off the north coast of Jawa.

The features that puzzle me are the headband, which is something I cannot place, and the representation at the lower end, which could be a sarung, or some other item of clothing, or simply artistic convention to close the figure.

It is a piece by a non-professional carver, probably something that somebody has made for himself.

I was rather hoping that somebody may have been able to identify the headband as an item that could be associated with a particular era, religious group, cultural group, or location.

The nose is distinctly "roman" in profile, which seems to me that it might have an Arabic input, and by association, an Islamic inference.

Possibly we have a grass-roots interpretation of one of the Wali Songo?

The reason I posted the pic was to generate discussion, so your idea that it could be Melanesian is well and truly within the bounds of my original objective, but you can rest assured that it is most definitely not Melanesian.

I know what it is:- it is a keris hilt; I know the approximate area of its origin, and I have given this above; what I do not know---and probably can never know with any certainty--- is what it might represent.

[Tim Simmons]

Alan you clearly have a nose for evaluating art forms.