Ancestor hilt or tourist piece?

[mrwizard]

Hello everyone,

I'm new to the field of keris in general and this forum has been a extremely valuable source been so far. Many thanks to all experts here that so willingly share their knowledge.

My reason for leaving read-only mode is a keris i picked up recently. The hilt is most unusual (at least from my inexperienced point of view) as it is (a) rather coarsely carved and (b) clearly identifies as human.
Both is rather strange a even cheap tourist pieces sport more elaborative carving and almost all keris hilts
i've seen in this forum either depict some deity/demon (e.g. raksasha) or abstract very heavily form the human form.
From the history of the keris all i know that it has been in a private collection of a german collector for about 40-60 years and was sold by his relatives after his death.

It came in a sheat that has definitely been made for a completely different keris, so i didn't add any pictures of it.
Another remarkable feature is that the ganja is etched/rusted through at the pesi, so it is slightly bent outwards.

[PenangsangII]

the hilt is quite old and I wouldnt dismiss it as genuine although the carving is not that of high quality. The blade looks very Buginese IMHO, thus the quality of the hilt carving is "normal" under the circumstances, as we had known all along that Buginese is a warring and rough ethnic within Nusantara.

[BigG]

The blade is of the Buginese Sepokal form... How old it is and where it comes from, I cant tell for sure...

The hilt is like nothing i have seen before

[kai]

Welcome to the active membership of this forum!

The whole piece seems to be a composite: Blade, hilt ring, hilt, and - apparently - scabbard don't match. Thus, I'd suggest we only can evaluate the hilt itself if we want to discover more about it.

IMVHO, this hilt doesn't look Bugis to me - simple Bugis hilts are usually plain and of highly stylized form (well-carved but without any embelishments). Hilts vaguely similar in style and craftmanship that I seem to remember have been attributed to different parts of Java and also sometimes to the outer islands...

Regards,
Kai

[mrwizard]

Thanks for all the kind suggestions. My first guess was also bugis because of the blade form. But then, as has been noted, the hilt does not look like bugis at all.

The carving style seems at first glance be similar to the tau-tau ancestor statues of the Toraja. So my (wild) guess
is that the hilt originates from Sulawesi where these cultures live closely together.
However, i didn't find anything from these cultures depicting the gesture and hair-stye of the figure from the hilt :-/

Of course it might be a composite keris from completely unrelated parts, but then what was the motivation of combining these items? If it was for sale to tourists,
i guess it would have been easy to come up with a hilt that is more appealing to this target group. It also didn't seem to be very appealing to collectors either, because i got it rather cheaply.
Maybe the ensemble was combined by a european collector from "spare parts".

[kai]

Of course it might be a composite keris from completely unrelated parts, but then what was the motivation of combining these items?

Mixing and matching parts of a keris apparently has a long tradition all over the archipelago. There are enough examples that appear to be genuine and possibly based on personal preferences.

However, wild composites from several areas and including parts of lower quality are often seen offered from Java/Madura. Genuine spare parts from other regions are apparently often not available cheap enough to warrant the investment. Local craftsmen also try to copy "foreign" hilt and scabbard styles but these tend to be easy to spot since usually the flow of lines is off.

Maybe the ensemble was combined by a european collector from "spare parts".

Also a possibility - same approach to a similar situation...

Regards,
Kai

[A. G. Maisey]

Yes, I agree 100% with these remarks Kai.

The number of times I have seen mix & match keris goes beyond counting. All sorts of reasons can be identified for this, it can be a collector or dealer outside S.E.Asia, a collector or dealer within S.E.Asia, or somebody, somewhere in a keris bearing area of S.E.Asia who is outside of the direct influence of a particular keris style.

Even in Central Jawa, although we will see the classic Surakarta/Jogjakarta styles predominate in cities and towns, when you go into the villages you can find a lot of variation from the classic styles.

A couple of years ago I was shown a keris that had authentic old, provenance dating it to pre-WWII in coastal North Sumatra, and as a pusaka keris, that is, as a keris that had been identified as a family keris for an extended period of time. It was a complete hodge-podge of mostly very inferior parts, I forget the actual combination, but it was something like Bugis blade, home made wrongko with truncated Jawa pendok, rubbish Jawa mendak and some sort of poor quality ivory hilt, and it was quite small. If you saw it in a shop you'd write it off as junk, however, for the owner, in pre-WWII North Sumatra, who was a poor fisherman, it was the most important and valuable thing he owned.

Not all keris are wonderful works of art.

[mrwizard]

I see, thanks for the clarification Kai and Alan. I wrongly assumed that the different styles were used as symbols for cultural/geographical identity and mixing styles would just look plain wrong in the eyes of members of that culture. Somewhat like combining sneakers with a business suit or someone in italy wearing a scottish kilt.

AND, of course, this a very specialised forum where most people care about every detail of their keris and will therefore present mostly the well dressed pieces of their collection. For sure there will be many "village style" keris around that will never end up in the collection of a keris-enthusiats or presented in an internet forum.

In the meantime i did some further "research" regarding the heritage of my oddball hilt.
What i found was this kodi from sumba which looks somewhat similar in style:
http://old.blades.free.fr/daggers/badik/kodi1a.gif

Further search about sumba revealed that the hair-knot is a common hair stlye of the women there and that there
is a also buginese minority. Didn't find any pictures of local keris, though. But as always i will propably stumble across one as soon as i stop looking ;-)

Best regards,
Thilo

[sirek]

saw today in an auction a sirih hand crusher with a similar hilt, perhaps
the hilt is from a sirih-crusher?

[Alam Shah]

Originally Posted by mrwizard

Thanks for all the kind suggestions. My first guess was also bugis because of the blade form. But then, as has been noted, the hilt does not look like bugis at all.

The blade is quite straight forward, Bugis..

Originally Posted by mrwizard

The carving style seems at first glance be similar to the tau-tau ancestor statues of the Toraja. So my (wild) guess
is that the hilt originates from Sulawesi where these cultures live closely together.
However, i didn't find anything from these cultures depicting the gesture and hair-stye of the figure from the hilt :-/

I've thought of that too, and reviewed the position of the ancestors, but the positions were mostly open arms.. so it's most likely not.. however, it does look 'priest-like'..