Gilded and painted Keris for viewing

[vampire]

very nice collection of keris
real nice
i have 3 like that
if i ever get mine photos on the com.
i send them to you
greet jan

[gwirya]

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

I can see nothing unusual at all in this blade.

The garap is fair average quality for a Bali blade of this vintage. There are minor artistic shortcomings that really do not bear mention, and can simply be written off as the maker's style.

To my eyes its just a pretty usual sort of old Bali blade.

What makes the whole thing nice is the old blade + old sunggingan in pretty good condition + the sunggingan is well preserved + the blade has what appears to be a nice old stain + the hilt is not bad either. As a total package its pretty nice and very scarce.

Alan, I am very interested in Bali keris, can you point out where is the minor artistic shortcomings? and what could you expect from the keris above if it is a better quality balinese keris. I know it could be subjective but I want to learn to distinguish small detail garaps that make up the "more than average" keris.

Thx

[A. G. Maisey]

Gwirya, if I had the keris in my hand, and you were sitting beside me, yes, I could show you the things that could have been done better. However, to try to tell you in writing the individual artistic deficiencies would run to far more than I am prepared to write.

I can make an overall comment, and that is there are curved lines where there should be straight lines, there is a lack of definition, there was probably insufficient time spent on layout before the actual carving started, there is inconsistency in repeated features, there is an overall lack of flow.

Its just not top work from an artistic point of view.

But as I said, these are minor deficiencies and really don't bear mention. Not all makers were great artists, and they did not need to be.

[gwirya]

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

I can make an overall comment, and that is there are curved lines where there should be straight lines, there is a lack of definition, there was probably insufficient time spent on layout before the actual carving started, there is inconsistency in repeated features, there is an overall lack of flow.

Its just not top work from an artistic point of view.

But as I said, these are minor deficiencies and really don't bear mention. Not all makers were great artists, and they did not need to be.

Alan, Which part is where there are curved lines where there should be straight lines?

Thanks

[A. G. Maisey]

It is not as simple as that, Gwirya.

We are talking micro here, not macro. To adequately answer your question I would need to be sitting with you and point out the defects one by one, and I would be using something small and pointed to do the pointing. Good garap and artistic interpretation in a keris is all about very, very tiny things.

However, there is one area of this keris where the carving has been very badly handled, and it is big enough not to need any particular expertise to identify.

Look at the convergence of the ada-ada - blumbangan - tampingan. From an artistic perspective this is very poor work.

Defects in the kembang kacang puguk are pretty obvious too.

When I look at this blade my feeling is that the maker was struggling, his work does not flow. It is competent work, but there is no artistic feeling to it.

I'm not going to comment any further on this blade.

I did not want to make these comments that I have made. If I had wanted to comment thus, and if I had thought it would have served a useful purpose I would have commented in my earlier posts.

This type of criticism should be reserved for blades where it is obvious that the maker has attempted art.

The maker of this blade has not attempted art and has simply produced a blade of the required form, with no particular attention to art or detail. He has made a weapon.

It is very unfair to criticise something for not being that which it did not set out to be.

[Gavin Nugent]

Alan,

Thank you for your wonderful and very well worded input on the subject of this Keris.

Since Gwirya has come to this posting asking these questions, in the interest of learning a little more myself I too have a few questions that are or are not answered easily.

Are you able to point to visual aids within the forum pages that can show the "change" for want of a better word, where art and the weapon meet as one? A visual aid may show an essence within lines and features that can be used as a comparision to better understand subtle differences that are hard to speak of.
In an artist light, does the painting and gilding sit in line with the lack of artistic detail to the blade or does it "mask" these subtle shortcomings of an artistic nature.

Thank you for your learned input.

Gav

[Rick]

....ask me; but I wanted to respond anyway .

< insert opinion here >

I would think that the paint and gilding certainly helped to sell the keris .
IMO the luks seem ungainly where they could have been so much more gracefully executed by a better smith .

Aesthetically, I hear a mental 'clank' when I view the entire blade .
Gav, I do not mean to offend; its just my opinion mate .

Regardless of the aesthetics of the wilah it is an old and rare piece and needs to be respected for what it is .

[gwirya]

Thanks for the guidance Alan, it seems pretty clear to me now. At the first time I looked at the blade, It seemed like a nice old blade with good metal ( padat and halus) but there is something a little off which I didnt know what it was.
@Rick, maybe the empu was to old to make such detail in refining the blade ricikan artistically. even Pak Sukamdi now cannot make a keris as nice as he used to, as his hand trembles.

[Rick]

Originally Posted by gwirya

@Rick, maybe the empu was to old to make such detail in refining the blade ricikan artistically. even Pak Sukamdi now cannot make a keris as nice as he used to, as his hand trembles.

Referring to the keris:

Perhaps the Maker was not an empu; certainly not all are .

I think we should be careful how we apply that designation to makers of keris .

[A. G. Maisey]

Gav, the short answer is "No".

The long answer is this:-

I really only feel competent to talk of "art" and "weapon" in the context of Javanese and Balinese keris. I could probably plough back through past threads and find examples of blades where I consider that a keris which appears to have been made as a weapon also displays artistic qualities of high degree. But I'm not going to do this because I have no interest in the exercise and because it would use far, far too much time. I do not keep references of threads in the warung, and in fact I keep almost no reference system of my own records, I treat each thing as it arises, and I run on memory.

I suggest that if you feel inclined to run back through old threads to search for a keris where weapon meets art, it might be best to concentrate of threads that deal with Balinese keris, rather than Javanese keris. I do recall seeing several very good Balinese blades in past posts, that would satisfy the criterian of art + weapon, but the level of Javanese blade needed to show this is a level that I cannot ever recall seeing in any thread. With a Javanese blade you would be looking for probably a tangguh Surakarta blade, pre-1940, that could probably be attributed to a known empu.

Within the standards that I have been taught, only the blade of a keris may be considered as art.

The dress for the blade is considered as craft.

Within the set of standards that I apply, the dress does not relate to the blade. I look at the blade, then I look at the dress. I regard the two things separately. In fact, I regard each element of the keris separately, I do not look at it as a total entity, except in the sense of whether that total entity is pleasing to the eye, or not. When the blade is in the scabbard, I cannot see it, so its function is simply to keep the handle and scabbard together. If these look pleasing to the eye, and are complimentary, the standard is satisfied. However, once the blade is removed from the scabbard I focus on the blade, and if I look at the dress it is appraised separately to the blade.

Gwirya, yes, it is a nice old blade. All blades do not need to be superb works of art. In fact they do not need to be any sort of work of art. A blade that has little artistic merit can be a superb weapon. A blade that has little value as a weapon, and little artistic value can have an essence that can be physically felt. Its not all about art --- as some people these days seem to think.

As to the reason why this blade under discussion is a little less than excellent as an art work, well, we could hypothesise all day on that:- old maker past his prime, new maker under development, experienced maker with little skill, talented maker working on a low budget --- lots of possible reasons, and from my perspective, the reason doesn't matter in the slightest degree.

When everything is boiled down, its a nice old Bali blade of slightly less than good artistic merit; it has been dressed in a style that is very scarce and is rarely seen , either in Indonesian collections, or in collections outside Indonesia. All in all, it is an asset in any collection.

End of story.

PS--- my original post #4 probably says all that needed to be said about this keris.

[A. G. Maisey]

Here are a few more examples of Balinese sunggingan keris dress.

[A. G. Maisey]

And a few more examples of Balinese sunggingan dress --- you can only upload a maximum of 12 images at a time, so these next ones follow straight on from the previous.

As is usual, the system has a mind of its own and does not post the images in the order in which they were entered, so you will need to follow the alpha tags to maintain coherrence.

The Balinese images finish at N

Then there are some Javanese sunggingan examples for comparison:-

O, P, Q, R are the work of Pak Legiman of Pajang, and were completed in about 1990.

S & T are of a pre-WWII Surakarta sunggingan in an alas-alasan motif.