eBay Toss of the Dice (NEW PICS!)
 

I may have just thrown away a few bucks, but i took a chance on this based on just one of the 4 bad seller photos. The dress is obviously a bit cheap and touristy and the hilt has a chip, but in that one image where you can clearly see a deep cut, well shaped sogokan and what looks like it just might be an original Balinese stain i think i may have got myself a nice old Bali blade for relatively little money.
I don't care too much for the 2-tone sarong, but figure i can strip and re-stain it all one dark color and i can replace the hilt if the damage really bothers me.
I'll update when i receive it, but my fingers are crossed.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...#ht_500wt_1156

EDIT: I have added the auction photos before they are removed from eBay for comparison.

Hi David,

keep my fingers crossed for you! :) It's good possible that the blade is a very good one and the dress isn't bad at all also when it's a tourist one, the carvings don't look to crude but it will need some work that the blade will get a good fit inside. The real prize will be the blade. I am curious to see the blade by good pictures.

Best regards,

Detlef

Have hope David .
The last example of this tourist oriented dress I purchased from Rand contained that beautiful Lombok / E.Jawa iras blade you stained for me .

Looks like your chances may be good, my friend . :)

Rick

This keris looks a lot better than 99% of the 'tourist' keris out there. At least the small daunan still flows nicely, and does not jut out like an extra appendage. :)

I received this keris today and would say that my gamble was fairly successful. The blade is a fairly well formed old Bali 9 luk blade that is extremely edge sharp. It has a nice clear pamor and well executed ricikan. As a bonus there seems to be a small triangle of gold applied to the blade on one side at the Bawang Sebungkul. :) Unfortunately on the reverse side there is a rough patch in this area that may have once held gold and has since lost it.
Someone also covered the entire blade in a cosmoline-type rust inhibitor. I am assuming that this will come off with mineral spirits, but it leaves a very ugly finish for now. And the hilt is stuck in the wrong position for now so i'll be slowly heating the blade to try to remove it so that i can properly clean it.
The newer cheap dress actually doesn't look all that bad in person. With a little work it will at least be acceptable for the time being. It should be too hard to fix the fit of the blade either.
All in all i am pleased and i will post when i can attend to some of this restoration.

Congratulations David, sounds very good. I am curious to see better pictures.

Detlef

Very good, David. I am happy of your good purchase.
I too have been attracted by this item, but have also noticed that the seller ships to US only....
I have a few times discovered good blades in tourist-looking dresses and was always puzzled for the reason of such "sacrilege" A proper scabbard and hilt would enhance a lot the appeal of the keris.
Anyhow, congratulations
GIO

I have also Gio. I think it happens for various reasons. Sometimes it's just a matter of what someone can afford. Often enough it's the case of a sheathless blade that somebody wants to sell, but they have no interest in spending the money to properly dress it first. :shrug:
Either way, i'd rather have this sheath to work with then none at all... :)

hi David,


can you please show some picture,s of the blade :)

I will Danny, but i want to do some work on it first, remove the cosmoline which is like a resin coating the blade and fix up the dress a bit. I am having difficulties with the hilt though. After 2 days of off and on heating the thing won't budge and i am afraid the previous owner used some serious glue to stick it. :(

OK folks, here's some quick first pictures of my preliminary renovation. I will probably take a better crack at the blade in the spring when the weather gets warmer and i can properly stain it. For now it's fine, even though i don't think i got all that nasty cosmoline off the blade yet. I finally got the hilt off and found that i needed to straighten the pesi. It could probably still go a bit straighter, but since i wasn't heating it i didn't want to go too far and snap it off. I did some minor refinishing on the scabbard and discovered that the dress is actually 3-tone as the hilt is darker than the wrongko. I was going to stain it all one tone, but have decide to leave it as is for now. I added a uwer i had lying around, not so much for the aesthetic, but more because the hilt doesn't fit all the way down and my drill bits didn't reach far enough to deepen the hole, but i think this uwer fits well.
Frankly i'm not too disappointed in the dress even though it is in the mode of what we have come to refer to as "tourist" dress. I think we have discussed this a little before, but i wonder when and for what original purpose this form of dress developed. This one is carved a little better than most and the wood is heavy and semi dense. The Kocet-Kocetan is not the worst i have ever seen. It is not a fine work of art, but it is nicely stylized and complete.
Ah, but the blade is what i took the chance on and i feel that my gamble paid off nicely. A well formed 15.5 inch gently curving 9 luk blade with deeply cut ricikan, good pamor and (BONUS!) a triangle of gold kinatah at the Bawang Sebungkul. There is also remnants of the same on the reverse side. I am not well versed on the difference in dhapur for different periods in Bali, but something tells me this might be an earlier blade. There is something about the way the features belly out at the gandik that makes me think so, but i might me off on this thought.
Anyway, enjoy the pics. I don't often post may keris, but you've all seen the eBay images and i am sure you would want to see better shots. :)

I think it looks great. What will you use to restain it when you get around to it?

Warangan....Arsenic and lime. :)

Doesn't look like it needs a re-staining, David .. :confused:

Or are you just that good w/Photoshop, Bro ? :D

Looks old !

Maybe not for now. As i said, some of the cosmoline remains and at the very least i need to get that off. The current stain isn't too bad, but it is uneven, especially around the edges as i don't think this has pamor wengkon... ;)
Not bad for 60 bucks, eh? :)

Not bad at all ! :)

Isn't wengkon an unbroken line standing back from the edge of the slorok following the entire profile of the blade ?

Whatever the pamor; it is delightful .

Well yes Rick, that's my point, that it is not. The stain is just worn away from the blade's edge. It doesn't look too bad, but it should probably go all the way to the edges. BTW, this is on of the most edge sharp keris i own. You could practically shave with it...
Any thoughts on the origin of this sheath type? Was it once an excepted form that became more "commercial" in the latter part of the 20th century. I don't think i have ever seen an old version of this form. I do believe i once read somewhere that it might be related to the theater (wayang). :shrug:

Bloody hell! :eek:

Congratulations!

Thanks,

J.

Hi David ,

Great blade !

I realy love this kind of pamor on the bali blade,s , just a little .
Imo why should you restain ? the old stain is still nice ,maybe not perfect but
nice enough.

This was a lucky number six on the dice :)

Thanks for the comments guys. I agree that for the most part the stain is not too bad here and i might well leave it alone. But i do need to get the remnants of the cosmoline off, which you may or may not notice in these photos. :o
I am really curious about 2 things in regards to this keris. Firstly whether others (besides Rick and i) also see this as an older Bali form. It seems that many of the antique keris we see from this area are late 19th-early 20th, but this one seems older to me. I have not found nearly as much information of the Bali keris in this regard as, say, the Javanese keris, but this keris has features which are somewhat unlike most late 19th C examples i have seen.
Secondly i am really interested in when and why this (i presume) newer dress form developed. We have certainly all seen the cheaper examples of this sheath, but was it always intended for tourist sales or is there some kind of cultural origin to the form? As i remarked earlier, i have never seen any really old sarongs in this form so i would imagine it did not come about until sometime in the 20th century. This would possibly put such information into the living memory of some, unlike so many other aspects of the keris that have been lost to time. :shrug: :)

David, what a lovely keris. Worth gambling, i should say.

About the dress i'm not completely sure where i got it from, but i do remember that it is said or written that this type of dress was used to wear the keris for barong dance. If it was developed from a cultural event or that it was used to impress those who traveled for pleasure, i don't know.

LOL, I was assuming that there was an alternative to arsenic!
Is it available to the public in the USA?

Yes Henk, i read the same somewhere as well, but i have no idea where and would love to find some source material on the subject. :)

Many people have tried alternative, some more successful than others, but i am of the opinion that the traditional method is indeed the best.
I got some arsenic trioxide pre-9/11. It wasn't too difficult, or maybe i just got lucky. I had to find a company that was capable of buying from the big lab companies and found one local to me that was willing to do it for me. The rules may be stricter today, but i still have a fair supply available as a little goes a long way.
:)

I knew i had one more image that i wanted to post, a close-up of the hilt. Again, no great work of art, but it does adhere to the basic form well clearly showing all the little insect bits, legs, antennae and wings that we should see on the kocet-kocetan hilt.

Hello David,

A very nice blade. the dress is not my style, but looks like a harmonious ensemble.

But why stain the blade ?
This looks like a bali stain to me. Are you able to get the same effect by restaining it ? Or will you create a javanese rough surface stain ? :shrug:

IMO, I would leave it and keep it well oiled.

Best regards,
Willem

I do address this question in posts #15, 17 and 20 and the bottom lineis that i might very well just leave it as is. :)
To answer your other question i have indeed managed to stain Bali blades in the past and maintain a fairly smooth and polished appearance on the surface. If i were to stain this blade i would certain attempt to maintain the finish in this manner.
If you look at the very first image of the blade close-up you can see a discoloring of the blade. I think this is the remains of the cosmoline which completely covered this blade when i received it. So at the very least it is due for another bath in some mineral spirits down the line.
As for the dress i'd have to say that it would not be most people's style per se. But considering the price (and the fact that it of a higher quality than most of it's ilk) i think i can learn to live with it... ;) :D

There is a reference in Frey, The Kris (third edition), page 74, caption for figure 31 which shows a similar scabbard and describes it as a 'carved wood Barong dance kris'. Beyond this I haven't personally seen any references.

Congratulations on a fine blade for a very fine price. Sometimes Ebay gambles do pay off.

Thank you Laowang. Come to think of it i do recall seeing this particular reference before. Unfortunately, in all the images i have ever seen of the Barong Dance the keris are already unsheathed so there is no telling if there is anything to this idea. :shrug:

Here is an image of a heavily carved scabbard that is in the Neka Museum in Ubud. The material is ivory. The display tag does not give any information on specific purpose nor use.

I would be extremely cautious in accepting any information provided in Edward Frey's book on keris. The photos are good and provided the captions are cross checked, these photos can be quite useful for ID purposes, as they are clear and distinct and cover a range of styles.

Ha, ha, ha. Agreed. My mention of Frey's attribution is certainly not an endorsement that he is correct.

I think we can all agree with this. I was just trying to determine where i had heard the story, not whether it was true or not. :)
What do you think in terms of age speculation on the blade Alan. So little has been written in English specifically on the Balinese keris and identifying it's various dhapurs through the centuries. Any ideas?
I am also curious about the very simple kinatah. I don't get the feeling that this rather plain and unpretentious application was done to try to raise the sale potential of this keris. It's just too simple and wasn't even mentioned in the sellers description. :shrug:

David, I've pretty much stayed out of discussion on this keris, because I really have nothing positive to add.

I don't think the blade is all that old, maybe mid-19th century earliest, it is FAQ for Bali keris of this era, the gold, if indeed it is gold, is not a recognised ornamentaion in this position and style, my immediate thought is that it may have been added to cover a hole in this part of the blade, if not this, then I have no idea what its there for. The dress in my opinion is quite good, and I'd leave it as is. Yeah, sure its not old, but so what? Are we students and collectors of the keris, or antique collectors? Things do not need to be old to be good, and just because something is old, that does not necessarily make it good. Of its type, this dress is pretty nice.

The really great thing about this keris is the price. This was a give-away.

No worries Alan, you haven't said anything particularly negative.
I am questioning about the age of the blade, not because it matters to me that it be 18th C or earlier, but because i find the dhapur, especially in regards to the execution around the gandik, to be different from what we commonly find on late 19th and early 20th C Bali keris. I did not mean to imply that it held any great antiquity and i never imaged it was anything more that a fairly average quality blade. As for the gold, i don't believe it is covering any holes and it was once on the other side of the blade as well in the same spot. Just trace remnants remain there.
And i am sure that i am not knocking the sheath. The craft is good for what it is and i do plan to leave it as is. Frey may be off track indeed, but i would still like to trace the origin of this sheath style. I don't have any problem with it being newer and i'm actually finding it a pleasant ensemble. :)

David, just as I had nothing positive to bring to the discussion, I equally had nothing negative.To my eyes it is just like any number of Balinese keris that I've seen. An older blade, modern but nice dress. Not a bad thing, but nothing really to comment on.

I cannot see anything at all that is unusual in the blade form. Bear in mind that there were a number of kingdoms, and blades and dress form varied from place to place. Pre-colonial Bali was not just one big homogeneous mass, it was divided into a number of various locations.We get minor variations in Balinese blades, some just look like super size Central Jawa blades. Some look like super size Segaluh blades. There is a lot of variation. This blade --- to my eye --- falls into the "average Bali blade" box. Typical surface finish, nothing unusual in the ricikan, older form of ron dha, not particularly well executed sogokan, but OK, slow waves, limited kruwingan resulting in rotan-like cross section, no gusen.

The gold is unusual. If it doesn't cover a defect --- which is the usual reason that little irregular spots of gold are put on a blade, I don't know why its there. Non formal gold dots & etc can be added to a blade for esoteric reasons, but you normally see these on top of the gonjo.

There are many unanswered questions with keris, and this applies most especially to Balinese keris, and again most especially to the questions that arise in the minds of some of us, which are often not even considered by the people to whose culture these objects belong.

We've got this new keris book which will hopefully appear in English and as a generally available publication before too long, but there is not much information of the type that seems to interest most of people here in that book. We've got a lot of names that were previously not known to most of us, but that's about all.The strong point of the book is the wonderful pictures.

You mention that you can see something different or special in the gandhik area of this keris. I've looked and looked, and I cannot see anything that strikes me as unusual. Could you be a bit more explicit in what it is that you can see in the gandhik area? Maybe you can see something that I cannot.

Incidentally, is the hilt ebony, or kayu arang? Heavy, dense hardwood?

Surely Alan you must know that i am aware that Bali was not a homogenous mass and that there are many subtle variations in blade form from the various kingdoms within it. I have, after all, read Wiener, Eiseman and Hanna numerous times and have at least a cursory understanding of the structure of Bali in both pre-colonial and colonial times. :-)
Perhaps what i am seeing as different in this dhapur is not so much a matter of age as location, though that seems to be an equally unresearched topic in regards to Balinese keris.
Can't say much more on this except that i am almost certain it is gold (i haven't had it tested) and it does not seem to cover a defect. :shrug:
Yes, far too many unanswered questions indeed. And yes, we collectors have our own set of special ones, don't we?
The best way that i can describe it is that the area in my keris seems to belly out as if it were pregnant. This is not the case as far as i can tell in most 19th-20thC Bali keris. It is a feature that i tend to associate with older Javanese dhapurs (which is probably why i thought it might be an indicator of age). I have borrowed a few example of Bali keris from the "Sold" gallery at Oriental Arms to compare.
I couldn't say for sure. The wood is fairly dense and a little heavy. It is darker on the outside. Were it is chipped it is a dark brown. So the surface may have been stained. It's kind of like dark chocolate on the outside and milk chocolate on the inside. :)

I also use warangan, but was told that somebody gets very good results with iron chloride (or iron sulphur ?). I Don't remember well, sorry. I have seen a couple of blades etched this way and the result was perfect.
Maybe other friends are better informed.

OK --- right spot:-

Yes David, I am aware of your high level of knowledge of cultural and historic background in respect of matters affecting the keris, however, although my response is addressed to you, it has been written for all those people who read our discussions here, and many, if not most of those people do not possess a similar level knowledge to yourself.

Yes, collectors do have their own sets of values, which tend to vary according to the base from which that group of collectors has sprung. Very often I find that the values of collectors are directed at the idea and culture of "collecting", rather than the ideas and culture which pertain to the objects that they collect. This remark is not exclusive to the collecting of the keris, but can also be identified in many other fields of collecting.

Regarding the slightly rounded form of the gandhik, I have seen this in a number of keris from both Jawa and Bali, and from various eras. I personally read it as stylistic variation that does not necessarily attach to any particular era or classification, but may be indicative of the work of a particular maker. In fact, in one of the keris that I made myself, I attempted a similar treatment of the gandhik, but it was not particularly successful.

Incidentally, the sogokan in the first keris you have shown from the Oriental Arms source appears to have everything that a well executed sogokan should have. This is very nice work.

Well Alan, i've read a few books. Hardly gives me a high level of knowledge, but enough for some basic understandings. :)
I am glad that you can see what i was talking about now even if it isn't a clue to anything in particular. Just something i was noticing, but then, as Freud is mused to have said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. :)
And i do agree, that first one from Ari's gallery does indeed have a beautiful sogokan...

Its better than nice David, its excellent.

Which causes me to think that perhaps the gonjo may have been replaced on this keris. Not recently, but a long time ago, as the fit to the tungkakan is nowhere near the same level of craftsmanship as is displayed in the rest of the sorsoran.