Keris bargain

[A. G. Maisey]

Old blade, West Jawa/North Coast.

Dress is as Kai has stated.

This style did start as a dancer's dress. I have seen a couple that came into Australia before WWII, but the dress style began to proliferate with the tourism boom that began in 1970's.

Two or three reasons for this.

Bali keris have never been as prolific as Javanese keris, less people in Bali and the Balinese people themselves lost faith in the power of their ancestors to protect them after the puputans. There is a story in the keris trade in Jawa that Japanese took thousands of keris out of Bali during WWII and later.

However, there is a continuing need for dress keris and performers' keris in Bali, and that need has often been filled by Javanese keris that are still in Javanese dress. Still, today, you can see the Balinese cultural police who enforce the rules during Hari Nyepi and other important occasions wearing Javanese keris, not Balinese keris.

So this rather exuberant dress style we see here was developed strictly for performers. But the tourists liked it so much that after a kecak dance or whatever they wanted to buy the performers' keris. So this keris style then morphed into a Balinese souvenir.

But it did not start that way.

Personally, I would not change anything on this keris. It is an excellent example of its type. Blade is nothing special, just a blade to hold the dress together.

Apart from which, how do we get a nicely made, nicely fitted wrongko for this blade unless we send it or take it to Jawa? In the Time of Covid? I should be in Jawa right now, but with the situation there I don't reckon I'll be back for another two or three years, minimum.

Of its type, a nice keris.