buginesse

[A. G. Maisey]

I find this recent profusion of toli-toli very interesting.

By about age 30 I had accumulated over 3000 keris. These were not all beautiful, perfect complete keris, but keris in every stage of disrepair and damage and I worked on a lot of them and returned them to something approximating fairly acceptable keris. By the time I was about 40 I'd reduced that 3000+ to no more than 40 pretty decent keris that were all original and in good condition, and this was the foundation for my present collection. During my thirties I put a lot of keris through auctions, both in Australia and in the UK --- this was long before ebay had ever been thought of.

Since the early 1970's I have been buying keris in Indonesia and from other countries --- UK, USA, Europe. My present personal collection is somewhere in the neighbourhood of 300 keris.

Now, the reason I find the present profusion of toli-toli to be so interesting is that I have only ever owned two keris with toli-toli, and in both cases those toli-toli were rather simple red cords, not beautiful examples of the jewellers art.

It is rather pleasing to see this revival of the production of toli-toli that originally were probably owned by only a handful of nobles, this gives most of us the opportunity to add exquisite pieces to our collections, pieces that 50 years ago we could never even have dreamed of possessing.