17 luk Bali?
 

Hello

This is one of mine, wondering if its old and Balinese or lombok.

Also if there is a reference for Bali dhapurs .

Thank you for your time.

Ivo

Hello,
Your 17 luk blade looks Balinese and well made, but I cannot comment about its estimated age. The kojongan style sheath is more common in Lombok.
The 2 reference books for dapur of Bali/ Lombok blades are:
. Keris di Lombok by Ir Lalu Djelenga (2000), pages 177-197
. Keris Bali Bersejarah (Neka Art Museum), pages 82-92
I checked in both books and your blade does not match with any standard dapur but these are less strongly established than in Java I think.
Best regards

Thank you,

concerning 15 and 17.... my bank also says i cant count well. :shrug:

Amazing hilt :-)......also sarong
....about dapur: there is another little book. The name of book is: " Bentuk & Gaya KERIS Nusa Tenggara Barat"

Looks like a nicely formed blade, but i don't find the hilt particularly impressive Marco. It is merely a later simplified version that attempts to mimic the pattern formed when the grip on this style was done with woven wire.
I agree with Jean that you most often see this sarong form from Lombok. The blade is a classic Bali form (though 17 luk is more rare), but given the connections between Bali and Lombok i wouldn't count out either as an origin.
I can't quite get a close enough look at this blade to call it old or contemporary, but it does seem to be of good quality.

Hello Ivoke,

very nice and good worked blade and good hilt. To my eyes it seems to be a keris with some age. Difficult to say if it is from Bali or Lombok.

Regards,

Detlef

thanks for your comments, and my son will know wich books to hunt down for the old man's birthday.

I incline towards Lombok as point of origin for the keris, principally because of the extremely well defined ada-ada.

A very scarce, but informative publication on Balinese keris is:-

"Keris Koleksi Museum Negeri Propinsi Bali"

A Government publication from 1992.

It is written in Bahasa Indonesia.

Thank you very much for your reply,

What should i look for to determin if the blade is old or not?

Of course the blade could originate from Lombok also, I personally inclined for Bali because of its very fine polishing.
Regards

It is finely polished, Jean, but I feel it is not a particularly old blade. My opinion is purely based on a minor aspect of stylistic execution, and I must emphasise:- it is only opinion.

It is true that Lombok blades very often have a textured finish, however, a Bali-style blade that originates from Lombok could have either type of finish, and very often, recently cleaned and stained blades originating from Bali have the same type of finish, because the blade gets sent to Jawa to be cleaned and stained.

I feel that the whole subject of whether a Bali-style blade originates from Bali or Lombok becomes quite confused, and especially with older blades it is very probably a specious distinction, as when Lombok was colonised by Bali, that part of Lombok which was governed by Bali was very probably regarded as Balinese by the Balinese.

Peoples of the Archipelago tend not to view water as a barrier, but rather as an open roadway, so the Euro-centric idea of islands being separated one from the other was not an automatic assumption in the minds of the peoples of the Archipelago.

I feel that an adequate designation for this keris would be:- "Balinese keris, possibly originating from Lombok"

Thank you Alan, and I fully agree with what you say.
Regarding the polishing of the Balinese blades, I would like to share a recent experience: the huge Balinese blade shown on the picture (50 cm long excluding the peksi) was sent to Bali for cleaning and staining as it also needed a new sheath. The result was quite disappointing and I think that the surface would have been smoother and the pamor contrast more apparent if the work had been performed in Solo according to my previous experiences. Note that the dapur of this blade is quite similar to the one belonging to Ivoke, but with 15 luks (dapur Carita Buntala or Buntala).
Regards

Well, the 17th luk is more obvious if you count them from the convex side.

Thank you for your replies, learned alot.

Jean, it is not at all unusual to encounter Balinese blades that are pamor sanak or just plain iron on the outside with a steel core. Most especially we should not be surprised to see this in a large blade, as the bigger the blade, the more difficult it can become to satisfactorily produce a pamor effect. Possibly this blade appears just exactly as it should appear. The cleaning/staining process cannot alter the foundation.

Certainly, we all hope for a brilliant pamor to emerge from obscurity when we clean and stain a blade, but that does not always happen. I've had some very sobering experiences during my lifetime in this regard.

In respect of counting luk.

The way we count now is an accepted convention, as with most keris conventions that are popularly accepted, it is a Javanese convention. In some other places luk are not necessarily counted in exactly the same way.

However, if we are to count in way of the current fashion, the easiest way is to start the count at the convex luk directly above the gandhik, then progress to the point by counting the convex waves on alternate sides of the blade, making certain to finish with an uneven number on the same side of the blade as the gandhik.