Madura Wrongko's of Various Types?

[Naga Sasra]

I have often been amazed at the variety in the dress of Keris coming from Madura.
I wonder just how many different types of Keris dress can be identified with a Madura origin?

[Alam Shah]

Another Maduran form.

[VVV]

The Gayaman sheath, Solo version, is also seen sometimes.

Michael

[Rick]

This combination seems to have been together for a long time .
The pesi is wrapped with human hair.
I've never had this one apart; I'm kind of superstisius about this one.

[Freddy]

Here is a Madura keris in my collection

[David]

Here are a few more examples. Please excuse the image quality, as i shot these very quickly on my porch this afternoon :

[David]

Here are three patrems from Madura in three basic sheath forms:

[A. G. Maisey]

Yes, I have also often wondered at the variety in Madura wrongkos. There`s a lot of variety in the handles too.

Regarding the photos that have already been posted:-

VVV--- I don't think this is a Solo style wrongko, it appears to me to be East Jawa; Madura is of course a part of East Jawa. The handle looks like an old North Coast one, not Madura.

Rick---why do you think this is Madura dress? The wrongko is Jogja, although the handle is Madura.

Here are few Madura wrongkos from my own collection. I`ve left handles and blades, and mendak out of it for the time being, to allow us to focus on just one element of dress at a time.

[A. G. Maisey]

And a couple more.

[Rick]

[QUOTE=A. G. Maisey
Rick---why do you think this is Madura dress? The wrongko is Jogja, although the handle is Madura.

Because the shape is so similar to the one you present as Madura and the one David also presents . I perceive a similar certain lack of 'belly' on the left hand end .
I guess I need a finer eye to discern Jogya gayaman wrongkos from Maduran .

[Alam Shah]

Are there names to identify the various types of sheath form?
Afaik, from the pictures... Ladrang Madura, Gayaman Madura and Sandang Walikat Madura in general.

David, your 1st piece, the sheath form is interesting and a beauty (the bird hilt too.) Your horn Sandang Walikat sheath is exquisite.

Alan, what are these type called? This one, the wings reminds me of the piece from Nagasasra's "Unusual Keris Dress from where?" thread.
http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/attach...id=13594&stc=1

This one, the central panel is typical of Maduran carvings, common especially on Donoriko hilt form. But its unique on this sheath form.
http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/attach...id=13613&stc=1

This one, upper portion of the wrangka, looks almost a Malay form, except for the carvings and the curves at the lower part of the cross-piece.


Interesting thread...

[A. G. Maisey]

I'm sorry, I cannot give names on Madura keris with any authority, and it is not my habit to say something unless I can back it up.

I have visited Madura a few times, and have spent a bit of time in the area of Suminep, but even when I was there, I was getting given different names for the same thing , by different people.

To be absolutely honest about this naming of things, it is something that has very little interest for me. It used to have, but as time has gone by I have found that one person will swear that something is called such and such, and then an equally qualified person will come along and call it something else, or I`ll go ten miles down the road and find it has a different name, or I`ll get a firm fix on the name of something, and then ask the same highly respected source ten years later what the same thing is called, and get a different name.

I call this whole thing :- "the name game", and I feel that the only way in which it should be played is by giving the name, along with the source, the geographic location it was obtained, and the date.

With Madura dress, some of the motifs can be identified with either Suminep or Pamekesan.

I have seen two styles of highly carved wrongkos in the Suminep Kraton museum that were identified as "gabilan", and "brahmana rsi".

I have heard stories about the origin of some motifs and some wrongko styles.

But I cannot give names for the wrongko styles, nor the handle styles, that I could present a case in court for, and win.

[A. G. Maisey]

Yep Rick:- it don`t got a belly.

Proportion is totally different.

In fact, David`s patrem example, and my Bali/Madura example I see as having only a slight similarity.

Your example is inarguably Jogja---longer, thinner, quite graceful. Humanise it. What do you see? Personally, I see a graceful woman in the prime of life.

Humanise my Bali/Madura and I see a middle aged housewife who likes to eat too much.

Humanise David`s and again I see a fairly substantial lady who is fond of food, and who could do with a bit of a bath and some make up.

To me, none of these wrongkos---yours, mine, David`s---look at all similar.

We need to take very careful note of very tiny differences.

[Naga Sasra]

Quote from Alan "We need to take very careful note of very tiny differences."

Well said Alan!

Thank you for the great response so far, wonderful pieces

Here are a few more:

[David]

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

Humanise David`s and again I see a fairly substantial lady who is fond of food, and who could do with a bit of a bath and some make up.

Hey....wait a minute....a bath?!
That green tinge is bad color balancing BTW. Part of why i apologized for my picture quality. The horn on the sandang walikat is green horn, but the color isn't quite that green. Hey, maybe they all need a bath.
Alan is right, of course. There are lots of small subtle differences which seperate these sheaths as specific variations on a form.
As for the name game, i tend to agree with Alan, though i guess it helps to at least have names for the general form types. In that sense i would guess that my first two examples are ladrang forms (formal), the bone horse head patrem is also a ladrang form, the ivory patrem is gayaman and the horn sheath is obviously sandang. The problem with this though is that i have no idea which of these catagories some of Alan's pieces would fall into. Would the sheath with the bird w/the floral design in the center be a formal dress sheath. What about the one with the horse that is basically the same shape. To me the lion sheaths that are known to be connnected with keris taken home by Dutch soldiers appear to be based on a gayaman form. Do these sheath always have the Dutch soldier connection or were some made for indigenous consumption?

[A. G. Maisey]

When I started talking abouts baths and make-up and women, I was talking figuratively. That patrem wrongko would benefit from being repolished, but if you did that you`d lose the patina so beloved of many collectors.

As to names, I've noticed that the more names I know, the more I tend towards using English names and giving English descriptions.

All the wrongkos shown in my pics were acquired in Indonesia, and all required some degree of restoration. Several were acquired in the Suminep area of Madura , including the two lions, the waterlily motif, and the bird.

This type may have been favoured by Dutch soldiers, but it would seem that some locals in Madura also had a liking for these highly ornamented pieces.

Erik, do you feel that perhaps there may be a stronger connection with East Jawa generally, than with Madura specifically, for that mamas sandang walikat?

[VVV]

"VVV--- I don't think this is a Solo style wrongko, it appears to me to be East Jawa; Madura is of course a part of East Jawa. The handle looks like an old North Coast one, not Madura."

Alan,

Thanks for correcting my description.
I find it hard to see the place of origin of some of the Putra Satu/Raksasa hilt variations.

Michael

[A. G. Maisey]

Yeah, they can sometimes be pretty confusing.

There is a whole batch of handle types that seem to me to be just about equally able to be described as "Madura", or "North Coast". This one I don`t think is one of them , but all these intricately carved handles need to be looked at hard and with adequate references.

The wrongko seems to resemble a Solo gayam , but it is not. The very small differences that could only be pointed out if you had this and textbook Solo side by side give it away. Yes, certainly the overall shape is Solo, but this particular type is associated with East Jawa. I recently acquired a small, old collection of ---I think---8 of these East Jawa keris, and if you see a number of them together like that it is easy to recognise that they cannot be Solo.

[Alam Shah]

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

... I call this whole thing :- "the name game", and I feel that the only way in which it should be played is by giving the name, along with the source, the geographic location it was obtained, and the date..

Ditto on that.

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

With Madura dress, some of the motifs can be identified with either Suminep or Pamekesan.

Could you further elaborate on this, please.

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

I have heard stories about the origin of some motifs and some wrongko styles.

I would love to hear the stories.

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

But I cannot give names for the wrongko styles, nor the handle styles, that I could present a case in court for, and win.

It's ok if you cannot give. I won't sue you in court.

I'm not interested in "the name game" either, but would love to use common terms for the purpose of discussion. It's easier so that others could be "in the same frequency", whether we use what the locals use, English names or general form as identifier to what is being referred.

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

I have seen two styles of highly carved wrongkos in the Suminep Kraton museum that were identified as "gabilan", and "brahmana rsi".

It would be nice if we could have pictures of these form.

[Alam Shah]

Originally Posted by David

Here are a few more examples. Please excuse the image quality, as i shot these very quickly on my porch this afternoon :

David, This is the first time... I've seen your lovely, exquisite fittings. The 1st one is an eye-popper (for me). I like it very much. The wood-grains are fantastic. Thanks for sharing. Now back to the topic...

[David]

Thanks Shahrial. You might have a tougher time getting me to show the blades.
That first one is a beauty indeed. This is one of my few all modern keris (dress and blade), with a late 20thC blade. I am very pleased this level of craftsmanship still exists.

[A. G. Maisey]

I possibly may have examples of gabilan and brahmana rsi around somewhere, but I can`t put my hand on them, and right now I do not have time to look. The highly carved example with the horse handle, that David posted, would be a gabilan. Brahmana rsi is more scarce, and is also highly carved, but is a fatter style.The examples I saw in the museum gave every appearance of being quite old.

With motifs on handles, a crown and tumpal ( a triangular pattern) is normally associated with Pamekesan, the winged horse and a dragon with Suminep.

What I meant by "---win in court---" was that I like to be pretty positive about something if I state that something is so. I may still be wrong, but if I say something is so, I want to be able to mount a case based on evidence and/or logical argument, that will prove my point or position. I dislike intensely, hypothesis presented as fact.

Yes, I agree, it does help if everybody can use the same terminology in a discussion. One of the great advantages of Harsrinuksmo`s ensiklopedi is that it provides a very adequate vocabulary to allow keris discussion. In describing or discussing keris, I will often not use the terminology or names that I have learnt over the years, and will instead opt to use the terms that everybody understands.I think everybody generally understands Surakarta terms for wrongkos, so I usually use these terms, rather than try to use the correct regional term for type of wrongko. With the handle of a keris , I usually use the word "handle", simply because there are several words in general use in Jawa---ukiran, jejeran, gagang---and the name for a handle varies from place to place, so I use handle as the word everybody understands. Even in Bali, dealers who sell keris handles now refer to them as "endel".

The stories might have to wait.

[Naga Sasra]

Alan, I knew that there would properly be a reaction with the photos of the mamas sandang walikat, and generally speaking it is perhaps more prevelent to say that the mamas wrongko is associated with East Jawa more so than Madura, but there is a fine line (and a short distance) on this one as I have seen many mamas attributed to Madura.
In my humble opinion it is sort of a "cross dresser" much like the wrongko's with Kala Langgam which as a Madura fashion can be seen in Bali, East Jawa, Central Jawa and even as an ornament on a presently listed Bugis Keris.

A few more:

[A. G. Maisey]

Yeah, those kala topengans seem to crop up all over the place, but although the motif is found in a number of places, the interpretation is always different. I have often seen pics of the Madura style attributed to Bali, which is understandable, because although it may be "made in Madura", the root is Bali.Just as with the bright yellow gayam style wrongko that I posted a pic of.

With the mamas sandang walikats, I have seen them, and owned them, with Madura blades, and Madura handles, and as Madura is a part of East Jawa, I don`t have any problem at all with recognising that we can find the mamas SW in Madura, just as we can find it in East Jawa, Central Jawa, North Coast Jawa---in fact all over the place.

However, going back maybe 35 years a very well known collector who lived in Malang, East Jawa, told me that this was a uniquely East Javanese form of wrongko. He may have been wrong, but he should have known what he was talking about , because of where he was based.I have never come across anybody in Central Jawa who wanted to give these wrongkos anything other than an East Jawa attribution.

A big problem with something like this is that we just do not know where it originated, when, or for what reason. We can't associate it with a kraton---which would make things easy for us. All we have is this pretty scarce form of wrongko that is a more or less Javanese form, but in metal.

On Madura you have two major centres:- Suminep, which has a Kraton, and Pamekesan which is a Kabupaten, or regency. The towns associated with these places are just like country towns. Suminep is like a little country town, but the area it governs is very broad, because it covers a lot of little islands.
The countryside in Madura is dry, and poor. Wages there are depressed, there is virtually no industry, tobacco is grown, cattle are raised, and rice is almost in the luxury class.This is today I`m talking about.

Take it back 100 years or so.

I have a wee bit of difficulty in thinking of these mamas wrongkos as the product of a place that would have been essentially a poor, rural area.

A short journey by ferry from Madura we have Surabaya. Big, populous, lots of industry---currently drowning in mud from an uncapped oil test drilling. Been a big city for a long time.

These mamas SW's are never gimpy, cobbled together things---at least not in my experience---they show precision and skill in manufacture. The type of precision and skill one would expect to find in a city like Surabaya.

On the other hand, the keris fittings from Madura demonstrate lavish detail in carving, the type of thing that artist/farmers can do when they are filling in time before or after work, or in between seasons.

To my eye, the stern simplicity of the mamas SW just does not fit into the Madura artistic template.

But it does look like the product of advanced metal working techniques.

OK---here`s one of those hypotheses that I dislike so much:-

mamas sandang walikat wrongkos were possibly initially manufactured in Surabaya, and exported to other parts of East Jawa, including Madura.

[Naga Sasra]

Mamas Sandang Walikats.

The problem with attributions is, a large percentage of them are inaccurate in nature, that be weather from published Keris literature and most often from sales catalogs, including those from the larger specialty auction houses.

That said, your logical explanation of the Maduran artistic template is well taken, and I for one would tend to agree with your post and certainly honor the opinion of the very well known collector from Malang.

Attached a few more. One highly carved wrongko is quite common and of very recent make, the second one is more of a question mark, and I would really like the forums opinion on this one??

[David]

That first modern example is quite nice. The Madurese knack for wood carving doesn't seem to have diminished much over the years.
That second one is a puzzler. I can't say i have seen this style of sheath from either Jawa or Madura before. To my eye it is more like a cross between Bugis and Madurese forms. The pendok looks more Javanese to me though. Hopefully other will know better than i.

[Alam Shah]

A similar wrangka... (ignore the fittings), what do you think.

[Naga Sasra]

Yes, the Madurese has not lost their flair for wood carving and even though this is a decorative wrongko most likely made for the tourist trade, they tend to apply that unmistakable level of workmanship.

As for the second one, it certainly look like Shahrial's wrongko is from the very same culture, one thing noticeable is both of them have a pendok in the Yogya/Central Javanese older style with the top edge arched.

Shahrial, do you know the origin of the wrongko on your piece?

[Alam Shah]

Originally Posted by Naga Sasra

... wrongko is from the very same culture, one thing noticeable is both of them have a pendok in the Yogya/Central Javanese older style with the top edge arched.

Shahrial, do you know the origin of the wrongko on your piece?

Unfortunately, I do not know either. General discussions amongst local collectors had pointed in the direction of Pesisir, Java North Coast region.

[Naga Sasra]

I just read the entire thread from post number #1, if we look at post #9 the last two photos, look at the wrongko, imagine it without the leaf and flower carving.

Now is it my imagination, or is this wrongko formed just like the one from Alam Shah and mine as well?