Bali wedding Keris

[David]

Originally Posted by kulbuntet

Hi all,

Dave, did you know that you can reconize Bayu from the fan in his hand? Both have one. In old day, Bali golden hilts were only for royals, im not sure iff its allowed to wear a golden hilt on a wedding or other ceremony nowdays. I have seen wedding fotos from bali and on all of them, the groom got a keris on his back with a white Waranka (highly posible ivory), same for the hilt, ivory(white) with silver angcup with gems, or silver hilt with also gems. I remember a post or story from some one that in some ocations the groom wear a rental kers... dont know iff its a tru story. The hilt in the op pic, is "tourist made" I have one here at home.. The stones are not stone.. their pastes or glas. made of brass, in some casses with thin gold layer.

Yes, thank you, i am aware of the fan in the hand. Still, like all things to do with keris i have heard this attribution disputed. This is why i approach all definite identifications with caution.
I think that in this day and age all restrictions on gold worn by non-royals is most probably gone. After all, Indonesia is not a monarchy.
I also stop short of referring to all but the most obvious keris items as "tourist". Certainly this is a low quality example. Even the one i posted is not on the highest quality. If this keris had indeed been used in a wedding (and i guess this is possible) then this hilt would have seen actually indigenous use. can't really call it tourist then if that were the case. I am sure that in times where money is short people use what they can afford. As i noted this one looks brass w/ mostly pastes. It should be pointed out however that in Bali at least, the use of glass pastes instead of actual stones is not necessarily a sign of poor quality as some very fine Bali hilts will attest to, having pastes mounted right next to sapphires and rubies.