Keris bargain

[Anthony G.]

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

Gavin & Anthony, please correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe these beautiful photos were all taken during the last 20 years or so? Like, yesterday.

In order to verify that what I have said in previous posts, not only in this thread, but I have posted similar comments previously, we would really need photos from the days of film, probably from pre-1980, as my memory is that before 1990 this highly decorative type of dress was not being made, and most of the more recent examples didn't even use keris blades, they used flat iron, or even thinner material, that was cut into the shape of a keris and the "pamor" pattern was batiked onto the blade.

There is another thing that is worth mentioning too. The dances that are staged in the tourist centres, like Ubud, Kuta, and all around South Bali, are 90% or better for the tourists. To witness the genuine performances you need to get away from the tourist areas. People do not realise just how much the tourist presence has changed Bali. Even the New Year's Eve Ogoh-Ogoh parades have been developed as a tourist attraction. The dance performances that are staged in villages and population centres that are not a part of the "Tourist World" are closer to reality. In these more "grass roots" performances even the keris dancers in the Barong dance use real keris, not ones with blades that have been annealed, and the Legong dancers and Sanghyang Dedari dancers are genuine.

But if you really want to see a real, gut twisting performance you need to go up to Ponorogo in Jawa and see the Reog.

[QUOTE=A. G. Maisey]Gavin & Anthony, please correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe these beautiful photos were all taken during the last 20 years or so? Like, yesterday.


Hi Alan, good day.

No idea about the photo as it was not posted by me. And thanks for the info about the performance in Bali and Jawa, really useful for me esp. i will visit these places in future.

Hopefully the virus outbreak can be contain soon so that I can visit Indonesia.

[A. G. Maisey]

Ah well Anthony, that's another of my deficiencies uncovered, I never did learn to read very well.

As to when we might get to go to Jawa, Bali and other places in Indonesia. My personal opinion is about two to five years for somebody prepared to take a risk.

I'm in contact with people in Central Jawa, East Jawa and South Bali almost every day, and things over there are in a real mess.

Here in Australia we probably will not see a vaccine until towards the end of next year, and that's if our expectations are realised. That vaccine will perhaps give us a 60% level of protection for a period of around 2 to 3 months.

In Indonesia there is not really any expectation that this contagion will be extinguished in anything like two or three years. So even if the two to three year prediction is more or less realistic, do I want to risk a 40% chance of infection?

I don't think so.

I might get back there for my 90th birthday.

[Marcokeris]

a pic from the book called "Bali" edit in 1941 by Philip Hanson Hiss

[A. G. Maisey]

A nice old photo Marco, but what David wants to see is dress.

We know there are a lot of photos of dancers who are holding keris, but how many dancers are wearing keris, especially the particular style of keris dress that is under discussion?

I really cannot recall having seen any dancers in Bali actually dancing whilst wearing a keris. I might have, most of the dancing that I watched was over 20 years ago, mostly in the 1970's. I must admit, get a bit bored with Balinese performance art these days.

[JustYS]

Got it from ebay: Illustration from Le Petit Journal

[Jean]

Which odd detail do you notice about the 3 krisses shown on the picture?
This tragical event caused a lot of resentment againt the Dutch in Europe at that time.

[kai]

The painter knew damaged keris with detached crosspieces stubbornly holding onto their blades...

Unless prepared on the spot (which was a rare exception), period artwork needs to be taken with a lump of salt rather than as evidence.

[David]

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

A nice old photo Marco, but what David wants to see is dress.

We know there are a lot of photos of dancers who are holding keris, but how many dancers are wearing keris, especially the particular style of keris dress that is under discussion?

I really cannot recall having seen any dancers in Bali actually dancing whilst wearing a keris. I might have, most of the dancing that I watched was over 20 years ago, mostly in the 1970's. I must admit, get a bit bored with Balinese performance art these days.

True Alan, i would like to see the sheaths used by dancers and actors to truly confirm that they were indeed used by them. However, what i do see in Anthony's 1941 image is again the use of the bondalan hilt form, not the figural hilts that we always see mated to these so-called dancer sheaths.
Here are two more images from famed photographer Henri Cariter-Bresson of the Barong dance from his time in Bali in 1949. Again we see the bondalan form. I cannot say i have ever seen a bondalan hilt matched with these "dancer" sarungs though.
Now this isn't conclusive evidence of course, but then, what are we basing the assumption that these sheaths actually were used by dancers and actors at some time? I don't doubt your remark that you "have seen a couple that came into Australia before WWII", but we can't really take that to the bank, now can we? Have you ever personally seen such dress actually used in Balinese theatre or dance in the past? Do you have access or photographs to these pre-WWII examples of this dress so that we can compare it to the tourist dress that we are assuming developed out of it? I mean, we have examples of keris dress that go back hundreds of years in collections. Surely then older examples of this dress should still exist somewhere. Again, i am not so much doubting their existence, and it makes a certain amount of sense that this dress form didn't just appear out of nowhere in the 1960s and was suddenly adopted for tourist keris, but i would like to see some actual evidence to confirm these suspicions.

[A. G. Maisey]

Thanks for those great photos David, Cartier-Bresson really was a master.
Incidentally, I doubt that we can consider the men who take part in the trance scene of the Barong Dance to be dancers.


David, I very much doubt that you ever will see any evidence that this flamboyant dress style was originally a style used by dancers. I believe it to be so, because the story that I have retold was told to me by a couple of different people many years apart.

The first time I heard it was from a gentleman who had bought it in Bali pre-WWII. I would have been about 20 at the time. His story was that he had bought it from a dancer after a performance. The second time I heard the story was maybe 10 or 12 years ago from an American gentleman who was living in Ubud, he just casually mentioned that the keris he had --- the style under discussion --- he had bought from an old Balinese man who had been a dancer --- his story had more to it than that, but the rest of that story is unimportant.

I have seen another of these keris that belonged to a very good friend of mine who passed away around 5 years ago. He had bought his example in the 1950's from a Dutchman who had lived in Indonesia and came to Australia when the Japanese occupied Bali. That keris went to auction last year.

In the 1960's and 1970's there were a lot of this style of keris for sale in the tourist centres of South Bali, the earlier ones I saw had real keris blades, the later ones had flat iron blades. In the 1960's & 1970's the Bali tourist trade was nothing like it became after about 1985. There were no big tourist emporiums, in Kuta there were a few scattered warungs along Jln. Pantai and Jln. Legian. Chemist shops & grocery stores sold cock spurs, keris and genuine dance masks. Most of the tourist trade was carried out by hawkers who went from losmen to losmen or waited in front of the few hotels. This keris style under discussion was something that you saw often.

I think it was probably sometime in the 1980's that this style of keris began to disappear in Bali. I don't think I've seen one for sale in Bali itself for 25 years at least.

As far as I'm concerned this keris style is not something that I would want as a part of my collection, it started as a theatrical prop, it became a souvenir. Not quite the sort of thing that relates to my own interests. But still, a good argument could be mounted that it is a part of Balinese culture and as such it deserves a place in a complete collection.

There are many things that are a part of the study of Javanese & Balinese culture & society that we cannot prove. We collect little snippets of information that sometimes link together and provide something that can be believed, and at other times those snippets never connect to anything at all and just float around with tails attached to them by people who have very good imaginations. (I do mean "tail", not "tale").

Because of my own experience, I choose to believe the "dancer" story that is associated with this keris style. What other people may believe is completely up to them. But I think one thing is certain, and that is that nobody is ever going to see a photograph of anybody in Bali, let alone a Balinese dancer, wearing this style of keris. Quite simply, the law of probability makes this very improbable.

Think about it:- a dancer in a small part of a very small island more than 50 years ago was photographed wearing a keris with a non-typical dress style, at a time when that small island had not become the tourist destination that it later became, and where dancers very seldom actually wear a keris whilst performing.

Believe or do not believe, its up to you.