Malay Sundang for comment

[kai]

Hello Leif,

A recently acquired Malay sundang that I finally got around to taking some pictures from. Purchased from a fellow forum member, who thought it might date to the late 18th/early 19th century, but I'm happy to hear any dissenting opinions.

I assume he meant turn of the 19th century (1890ies/1910ies)? For Malay sundang we don't have any established chronology nor specific stylistic details to go by when trying to date a piece. The straight gangya line doesn't make this an early kris, I'm afraid.

I could live with a rough guesstimate of the blade being probably antique or possibly close. Also the crosspiece and probably the pommel do seem to have some age. The stem of the scabbard as well as the grip look like more recent work IMHO.

27 inches long over all, blade has a single fuller, and an old repair to the ganja/blade, probably done with brass.

I'm not sure the tang is affected/repaired as suggested above - looks more like a part of the gangya broke off?

I plan to spend some time with this in the future, polishing the copper and the silver, and cleaning up the blade a bit.

For working up the blade, I'd suggest to completely remove the hilt and the clamp. The base with the repair will be difficult to work on; if you go for polishing the whole blade, it may be worth also cleaning/polishing up this area (removing most solder on the blade) and repatinating the remaining brass(?) after staining the blade. Maybe an exploratory cleaning and etching of the upper half of the blade might be a good idea to look for laminations and decide how much effort to invest the whole blade?

Regards,
Kai