Something worth a passing glance

[A. G. Maisey]

I thought it might have come from me, but I usually rely on memory with this sort of thing --- ie, what i once had & no longer do have --- & my memory banks are over-full, so I tend to forget things. However, if i said it was silver when I passed it to you, it is silver, I always test before I say someting is silver, its too easy to make a mistake.

As to the motif. The word "semen" comes from "semi", it is the same root that gives us the "tunggak semi" planar jejeran/pegangan style, "semi" means to sprout, to blossom, to form a bud, the idea is representative of new life, a new start.

In olden times the semen class of batik motifs were the prerogative of royalty.

There are a lot of semen motifs and they can include a lot of sub-motifs, in your pendok the boomerang type things are supposedly representative of a tiered garden, but we can also see birds, a suggestion of serpents and foliage, the fan-like motif at the top of the pendok is supposedly representative of a peacock.

I'm not expert in the reading of these motifs, and I rely to a large extent on two sources:- batik pattern books & the opinions of people who know vastly more than I do about Javanese art motifs.