Balinese/Lombok pedang

[Maurice]

Originally Posted by kai

Congrats, Maurice, nice score!

Got the blade "washed" recently?It looks very dark while the inlay is shiny; I'd give the silver on the hilt and scabbard a gentle polish, too.

These pedang come from all over the archipelago - mostly along the arc from Sumatra to Sumbawa with a bit of Banjar/etc. thrown in. Given the Islamic script, I guess we can exclude Bali as the origin of this piece.

Hopefully the inscription will give us some clues... From what I can glean from the pics, the inlay looks a bit crude though. And the inlay is very intact. I'd posit that the inlay got added later but you get a much better idea from handling it up and close - what can you read from the blade, workmanship, patina, etc.?

Regards,
Kai

Kai, the blade had not been washed recently. You can see the lamination when having a close look to the blade. It also smells not "washed", and it's just the colour I've seen on old blades, which turn out black from dirt or whatsoever...
I recently cleaned a Javanese sword with brass inlay. You could hardly see the brass inlay before. But after giving it a good rub with some dishsoap, the brass inlay looks like new, but the blade is still very black. No matter how hard I rub, it will stay black!
If you mean this with "washed" I think that's what happened.

The inlay is far from crude, but probably you think so because of the close ups. I never have seen a better inlay on these kind of swords.
It looks like it was done with a finewriter, but it isn't. When looking at the images of the whole blade you can see how smooth it looks, and not crude as done recently.
The inlay like this, is done the way it was occurring on other 19th century blades.
Also when you look on the last image of #5, you can see a part which isn't rubbed as good as the other part of the blade.

Ofcourse I agree the inlay could be recenter as the sword, but it's very good craftmanship and also done a long, long time ago..

About the silver, I leave it as it is. Love the patina more as the shiny silverwork.. :0

Sometimes you've got to have it in hands. This one is such piece you can't show it on images. You have to see and feel it.
The blade is very smoothly forged, high quality. Also the inlay is very good work, and therefore it's all there and not (partly) gone allready (as seen on quality inlay of old blades). This in combination with an enormous patina on the handle (which I've not seen often on these pedangs, probably because people cleaning the silverwork and decide to clean the whole handle instead?), tells me I need to keep this one in my own collection, though it isn't Borneo and I'm not attracted to these kind of pedangs normally!

Maurice