Old keris ?

[Richard G]

Hello,
Keris is not really my thing, I am normally to be found on the ethnographic forum. However, I do have this, possibly old, keris. The blade has been been badly rusted and pitted but it is still possible to see the remains of what looks to have been quite a complicated pamor. What makes me think it might once have been quite a good one are the remains of, quite thick, gold encrustation to the top of the ganja.
Any and all comments welcome.
Regards
Richard

[Henk]

A very lovely blade, with golden remains on the ganja. I would clean the rust with pineapple or lemmon juice. Lemmon juice is more agressive but is mostly used to clean a keris blade. Is a mendak present? I only see the ukiran.
Maybe Alan can tell more.

[Rick]

The ukiran looks like a variation on the 'woman' motif .

[A. G. Maisey]

Nice keris.

I can't see much rust on this blade.

Yes, if I was going to stain it, I'd clean it first, and that clean would be vinegar, simply because our pineapple juice these days is garbage.

However, the gonjo would not be cleaned with vinegar, pineapple juice, Coca-Cola, tomatoes nor any other sort of soak.

I would use a very bright light close up, along with a saddler's needle held in an awl and a 3X tool maker's loupe. I would very carefully remove all the corrosion manually. That gold may not get through a soak.

[Richard G]

Thank you Henk, Rick and Alan,
No, Unfortunately there is no mendak. I have already given the blade a preliminary clean by soaking with Plusgas and rubbing down with crumpled aluminium foil. this has got rid of most of the surface rust but it is still present in the "pittings" which gives the blade a brownish tinge. I will try vinegar, lemon juice etc. and see what happens.
I also attach photo's showing the scabbard. I am not sure whether or not this is original, it is a very close fit but not perfect. And another showing some of the pitting on the blade.
Any idea as to age or origin?
Regards
Richard.

[Henk]

You're welcome, Richard.

Now that you show us the scabbard as well i think the keris is from Sumatra, Palembang. It certainly has some age. I strongly advise you use the cleaning Alan sugested.

Vinegar is a good option to soak it, but for more control i usually clean a blade with a slice of lemon or lime. That gives me more control on the cleaning process. But with te remains of gold on the gonjo i would be more careful as Alan said.

Sorry Alan for still using the term ganja in stead of gonjo. That's a dutch habbit just like we say Wrangka in stead of Wrongko. But i still do remember your wise lessons. But learning something new is easier than turning an old habbit into another one

[KLUNGKLUNG]

The sarong might be an indicator to determine the origin of the blade but in this particular case I have some doubts if Palembang is correct.
Similar sarong with the same sampir attached. This Palembang keris has a typical blade of the specific area.

[A. G. Maisey]

In my opinion it is a very great error to use the relatively easily identifiable origin of dress to influence an opinion relating to the origins of a blade.

Blades that originated in all regions can be found in dress from other regions. Numerous examples of this can be quoted.

In respect of the dress of this keris under discussion.

It could be Javanese.

Everybody is familiar with the keris dress associated with the kratons, but what the vast bulk of collectors do not recognise is the keris dress that comes from areas that were not under the direct influence of a kraton.

In a remote or village setting, a man would carve his own keris dress and the guiding influence would not be the form worn in the local kraton, but rather, the form worn by his father, and previous family members.

Remember this:- it was not until the Dutch opened up roads in Jawa that communication between the various regions of Jawa was facilitated.Before the road system was developed much of Jawa was covered with dense forest and the rivers were the highways. Anywhere not near a river might just as well have been on the moon --- well, so to speak.

Up until about 10 or 12 years ago there was a village not all that far from Karang Pandan, near Solo, where mature people lived who had never made the journey outside their village. Solo was about 2 hours away by bus --- after the one hour or so walk to the bus stop. There is a pretty good road to that village now, and except when the road washes out in the wet season, Solo is easily reachable.

It must be noted that very early Javanese wrongkos were almost exactly the same as the square form now associated with The Peninsula and Bugis styles.

To return to comment on this blade.

It is well known that Palembang keris form was influenced by Central Javanese keris form, and that South Sumatera in general was influenced by Jawa in general. But apart from influence there is also the fact that keris originating in Jawa made their way to South Sumatera one way or another.

Perhaps the best known example of this is Si Ginje.

I would suggest that to say precisely what classification applies to this blade, at this time, is a little premature. It should be stained before any defensible opinion is able to be given, and an opinion that cannot be defended is only a guess.

As for the dress, anything is possible.

[A. G. Maisey]

No problem with the spellings Henk.

Wrangka would still be pronounced wrongko. In fact, current correct formal spelling would be wrangka, and gonjo would be ganja. I usually use the phonetic spellings because most people reading these posts would not know how to correctly pronounce wrangka.

In fact, it is virtually impossible for somebody who has not been taught correct Javanese pronunciations to get them right from the printed word.

This "a" "o" thing has its roots in the change from hand writing to type writing to computers.

When hanacaraka (honocoroko) was romanised, words like gonjo and wrongko etc had the sound represented by an "a" with two little dots over it. The sound of this is definitely not "a", nor is it "o", its sort of like an "a" that is formed far back in the throat, and to the modern ear sounds like a phonetic "o". If I were a linguist I could explain this better, but I'm not.

In any case, how it is spelt doesn't matter, how it is pronounced does.

Wrangka = wrongko, ganja = gonjo


Re the use of brushed on lemon or lime juice for cleaning.

Yes, I agree that the use of this is an excellent method, and for a blade with a relatively smooth surface, and made from non-porous material, it is without question the premium method to use. It uses a lot of time, but it is the best.

However, for a blade that has pitting, or a blade that is made from porous material, a soak method of cleaning is required. The medium used for the soak could be coconut water, citric acid, vinegar, or any acidic medium. Some commercial blade cleaning in Jawa is done with very dilute hydrochloric acid.

For a long time I used pineapple juice, but in recent years that has not been my preferred medium, simply because good pineapple juice is no longer available.

[Henk]

Alan,

Thanks for your reaction. I do agree with you about the cleaning options. In exactly that way i choose my cleaning method. In the case of the ganja i would go for the careful method and rub gently with a slice lemon. Also the picking with a needle would be definitely an option.

For the spelling you're also completely right. The sound is neither a or o. I have some old dutch books that write ganja an wrangka with a small o above the a. Indicating what you just wrote.

[A. G. Maisey]

Henk, I would suggest that when we use lime or lemon to clean a blade, it is easier, neater, cleaner and in all ways preferable to use strained and filtered juice together with a small, stiff brush, than to use raw fruit rubbed onto the blade.

Lemon juice should not be used in combination with warangan for the stain, as the result is never correct.

The inside surface of lime skin used under running water, after the juice has been removed, can be rubbed onto a blade if the stain has become too dark, in order to lighten the colour.

Yes, I've seen the little "o" used above a Javanese "a". I think perhaps the two dots were introduced because of some printing or typing necessity. An "o" above the "a" is certainly more indicative of the required sound.

[Henk]

Alan, lemon juice gives a brownish, yellow color and is indeed for staining not very suitable. Limes give a more clear juice that won't discolor as a way of speaking.

Strained and filtered juice in combination with a stiff brush is more convenient to use indeed. Using the raw fruit i learned from the fathers from my friends here in Holland. In my childhood i grew up in a neighbourhood with many indonesian people. I had a lot of friends among them. I suppose the fascination for keris and malay weapons was lighted there .

The reason for using raw fruit was that they could leave it on the blade on a spot with rust that wasn't removed during the rubbing. The fruit soaked the rust spot that came of more easier a while later. Could be a local habbit that was brought to Holland those days?

[A. G. Maisey]

Yes Henk, I do know that some lay people use raw fruit, but it is unsatisfactory for many reasons.

My use of brushes began with lessons from a gentleman named Romo Murdo who claimed to have responsibility for maintenance of the pusakas in the Jogjakarta Kraton. In fact, he would use new brushes for each batch of blades he worked on. That was in 1974.

Then a couple of years later I had the opportunity to watch Pauzan Pusposukadgo working, he was not teaching me, I only watched him work a few times. He used brushes for cleaning when the rust was only very light, never raw fruit.

From 1982 through to the mid-1990's I worked with and also watched Empu Suparman many times. For cleaning a very slightly rusted or dirty blade he used both brushes and his bare hands. Never raw fruit.

These three people were the most highly ranked of those who I have learnt from, but I've watched others in Jawa over the years, and they usually have used brushes. I've seen raw segments of fruit used at times too, but that was to rub stubborn patches, not for the base cleaning.

On the use of lemon juice. I've tried lemon juice a few times, it has not caused a brown discolouration, but it has made the stain far too dark and just about impossible to lighten satisfactorily.

A brownish yellow stain usually occurs when a blade has not been properly whitened before beginning the stain.

Sometimes this brown/yellow discolouration is not obvious in an otherwise well stained blade, but you can detect it by taking the blade into direct sunlight and slanting it so that you can see through the stain to the metal underneath.

Whenever I have blades stained commercially in Jawa I inspect them very carefully under direct sunlight, from the first attempt I usually reject somewhere between 20% and 50% of the work, from the second attempt I usually reject about 10%, any that are still unsatisfactory after the second commercial attempt I do myself, and this probably is about 2%.

Going back 60 years or so, my first attempts at staining and cleaning were picked up from a book, it might have been "In Asian Forests", or some similar title, I think the author might have been Bastin. This called for the use of salt, sulphur and water from boiled rice, wrapped in a palm leaf and left for a week or so to effect the stain. In fact, I believe now that this treatment was intended to expose the pamor topographically, but the few blades I stained in this way did come up satisfactorily, my guess is from residual warangan.