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.