Gav, the short answer is "No".
The long answer is this:-
I really only feel competent to talk of "art" and "weapon" in the context of Javanese and Balinese keris. I could probably plough back through past threads and find examples of blades where I consider that a keris which appears to have been made as a weapon also displays artistic qualities of high degree. But I'm not going to do this because I have no interest in the exercise and because it would use far, far too much time. I do not keep references of threads in the warung, and in fact I keep almost no reference system of my own records, I treat each thing as it arises, and I run on memory.
I suggest that if you feel inclined to run back through old threads to search for a keris where weapon meets art, it might be best to concentrate of threads that deal with Balinese keris, rather than Javanese keris. I do recall seeing several very good Balinese blades in past posts, that would satisfy the criterian of art + weapon, but the level of Javanese blade needed to show this is a level that I cannot ever recall seeing in any thread. With a Javanese blade you would be looking for probably a tangguh Surakarta blade, pre-1940, that could probably be attributed to a known empu.
Within the standards that I have been taught, only the blade of a keris may be considered as art.
The dress for the blade is considered as craft.
Within the set of standards that I apply, the dress does not relate to the blade. I look at the blade, then I look at the dress. I regard the two things separately. In fact, I regard each element of the keris separately, I do not look at it as a total entity, except in the sense of whether that total entity is pleasing to the eye, or not. When the blade is in the scabbard, I cannot see it, so its function is simply to keep the handle and scabbard together. If these look pleasing to the eye, and are complimentary, the standard is satisfied. However, once the blade is removed from the scabbard I focus on the blade, and if I look at the dress it is appraised separately to the blade.
Gwirya, yes, it is a nice old blade. All blades do not need to be superb works of art. In fact they do not need to be any sort of work of art. A blade that has little artistic merit can be a superb weapon. A blade that has little value as a weapon, and little artistic value can have an essence that can be physically felt. Its not all about art --- as some people these days seem to think.
As to the reason why this blade under discussion is a little less than excellent as an art work, well, we could hypothesise all day on that:- old maker past his prime, new maker under development, experienced maker with little skill, talented maker working on a low budget --- lots of possible reasons, and from my perspective, the reason doesn't matter in the slightest degree.
When everything is boiled down, its a nice old Bali blade of slightly less than good artistic merit; it has been dressed in a style that is very scarce and is rarely seen , either in Indonesian collections, or in collections outside Indonesia. All in all, it is an asset in any collection.
End of story.
PS--- my original post #4 probably says all that needed to be said about this keris.
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