Ancestor hilt or tourist piece?

[mrwizard]

Thanks for all the kind suggestions. My first guess was also bugis because of the blade form. But then, as has been noted, the hilt does not look like bugis at all.

The carving style seems at first glance be similar to the tau-tau ancestor statues of the Toraja. So my (wild) guess
is that the hilt originates from Sulawesi where these cultures live closely together.
However, i didn't find anything from these cultures depicting the gesture and hair-stye of the figure from the hilt :-/

Of course it might be a composite keris from completely unrelated parts, but then what was the motivation of combining these items? If it was for sale to tourists,
i guess it would have been easy to come up with a hilt that is more appealing to this target group. It also didn't seem to be very appealing to collectors either, because i got it rather cheaply.
Maybe the ensemble was combined by a european collector from "spare parts".

[kai]

Of course it might be a composite keris from completely unrelated parts, but then what was the motivation of combining these items?

Mixing and matching parts of a keris apparently has a long tradition all over the archipelago. There are enough examples that appear to be genuine and possibly based on personal preferences.

However, wild composites from several areas and including parts of lower quality are often seen offered from Java/Madura. Genuine spare parts from other regions are apparently often not available cheap enough to warrant the investment. Local craftsmen also try to copy "foreign" hilt and scabbard styles but these tend to be easy to spot since usually the flow of lines is off.

Maybe the ensemble was combined by a european collector from "spare parts".

Also a possibility - same approach to a similar situation...

Regards,
Kai

[A. G. Maisey]

Yes, I agree 100% with these remarks Kai.

The number of times I have seen mix & match keris goes beyond counting. All sorts of reasons can be identified for this, it can be a collector or dealer outside S.E.Asia, a collector or dealer within S.E.Asia, or somebody, somewhere in a keris bearing area of S.E.Asia who is outside of the direct influence of a particular keris style.

Even in Central Jawa, although we will see the classic Surakarta/Jogjakarta styles predominate in cities and towns, when you go into the villages you can find a lot of variation from the classic styles.

A couple of years ago I was shown a keris that had authentic old, provenance dating it to pre-WWII in coastal North Sumatra, and as a pusaka keris, that is, as a keris that had been identified as a family keris for an extended period of time. It was a complete hodge-podge of mostly very inferior parts, I forget the actual combination, but it was something like Bugis blade, home made wrongko with truncated Jawa pendok, rubbish Jawa mendak and some sort of poor quality ivory hilt, and it was quite small. If you saw it in a shop you'd write it off as junk, however, for the owner, in pre-WWII North Sumatra, who was a poor fisherman, it was the most important and valuable thing he owned.

Not all keris are wonderful works of art.

[mrwizard]

I see, thanks for the clarification Kai and Alan. I wrongly assumed that the different styles were used as symbols for cultural/geographical identity and mixing styles would just look plain wrong in the eyes of members of that culture. Somewhat like combining sneakers with a business suit or someone in italy wearing a scottish kilt.

AND, of course, this a very specialised forum where most people care about every detail of their keris and will therefore present mostly the well dressed pieces of their collection. For sure there will be many "village style" keris around that will never end up in the collection of a keris-enthusiats or presented in an internet forum.

In the meantime i did some further "research" regarding the heritage of my oddball hilt.
What i found was this kodi from sumba which looks somewhat similar in style:
http://old.blades.free.fr/daggers/badik/kodi1a.gif

Further search about sumba revealed that the hair-knot is a common hair stlye of the women there and that there
is a also buginese minority. Didn't find any pictures of local keris, though. But as always i will propably stumble across one as soon as i stop looking ;-)

Best regards,
Thilo

[sirek]

saw today in an auction a sirih hand crusher with a similar hilt, perhaps
the hilt is from a sirih-crusher?

[David]

Like Sirek i am also wondering if this hilt was always intended to serve as a keris hilt. Here is a handle i bought a few years back that was listed as a keris hilt, though i was always pretty sure it was meant for some other implement such as a sirih crusher. Bought it anyway because it was only $5 bucks.

[Rick]

That Singha in horn you have, David; I always figured that was a betel crusher handle .

[David]

Yes Rick, i thought about that, but this one is also a women with a "bun" on her head so i saw more similarities with Mr. Wizard's hilt.

[mrwizard]

Hello Sirek and David,
This is indeed a very good suggestion and i think it might be the correct one. At least it's much more probable than
my Sumba theory (this post is currently still under moderation so you didn't see it).

I had a closer look at some more of those sirih pestle hilt
and many of them have carvings similar to my hilt.
Most of them look very much like keris hilts and the pestles have probably a tang that is not much thicker than a keris pesi which makes them a suitable and
inexpensive replacement.

Best Regards,
Thilo

[Alam Shah]

Originally Posted by mrwizard

Thanks for all the kind suggestions. My first guess was also bugis because of the blade form. But then, as has been noted, the hilt does not look like bugis at all.

The blade is quite straight forward, Bugis..

Originally Posted by mrwizard

The carving style seems at first glance be similar to the tau-tau ancestor statues of the Toraja. So my (wild) guess
is that the hilt originates from Sulawesi where these cultures live closely together.
However, i didn't find anything from these cultures depicting the gesture and hair-stye of the figure from the hilt :-/

I've thought of that too, and reviewed the position of the ancestors, but the positions were mostly open arms.. so it's most likely not.. however, it does look 'priest-like'..