Interesting Philippine Sundang for comment

RSWORD · 1st May 2014, 02:37 AM

What I find interesting about Dave's kris is that it has a mixture of sharp pointy luk and more typical late 19th, early 20th century smoother flowing luk. If you look at all the pictures, not all the luk are pointy. In my experience, the later pieces have ALL pointy luk. I think the provenance is solid enough on this piece. To name an individual and the fact that the items were in storage since the 1930's I don't think was provided loosely. Auction houses rarely list that kind of provenance. If they didn't have a certain degree of certainty I don't think they would have mentioned that. Then again, I have seen auction houses out and out lie but I don't think that is the norm, I think that tends to be the exception. I think they misidentify way, way more but in this particular case I would have more confidence in the provenance and would say this kris is 1900-1920. Without the provenance, I personally would have placed that sword circa 1930-40 so we are only talking a 20-30 year difference. Where did the dating philosophy of pointy luk originate? Has it ever been challenged? Are there other provenance examples that show pointy luk that pre-date WW2? I think this piece stands on its own and whether it is 1920 or 1950 is pretty inconsequential to its appeal as is.

1st May 2014, 02:37 AM	#14
RSWORD Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Greensboro, NC Posts: 1,086	What I find interesting about Dave's kris is that it has a mixture of sharp pointy luk and more typical late 19th, early 20th century smoother flowing luk. If you look at all the pictures, not all the luk are pointy. In my experience, the later pieces have ALL pointy luk. I think the provenance is solid enough on this piece. To name an individual and the fact that the items were in storage since the 1930's I don't think was provided loosely. Auction houses rarely list that kind of provenance. If they didn't have a certain degree of certainty I don't think they would have mentioned that. Then again, I have seen auction houses out and out lie but I don't think that is the norm, I think that tends to be the exception. I think they misidentify way, way more but in this particular case I would have more confidence in the provenance and would say this kris is 1900-1920. Without the provenance, I personally would have placed that sword circa 1930-40 so we are only talking a 20-30 year difference. Where did the dating philosophy of pointy luk originate? Has it ever been challenged? Are there other provenance examples that show pointy luk that pre-date WW2? I think this piece stands on its own and whether it is 1920 or 1950 is pretty inconsequential to its appeal as is.