a very lukky kris
 

The addiction is becoming more and more serious... i just received my third kris :rolleyes:

The 27 luk blade is 58cm (22.8'') long and has a seperate ganja. below the protective coating blade laminations that follow the luks are visible.
The asang-asang appear to be made from copper. The hilt sports several metal bands and quite complex cord bindings with two myterious wooden sticks on the sides.
The blackened scabbard on the other hand is made from very light wood and of very poor quality.

According to the seller this one has been in the previous owners family since the early twenties of last century.
The brownish tint comes from dried oil that covers all metal parts.

Next step would be cleaning the oil from the metal parts.

Best Regards,
Thilo

Beautiful Thilo.
Interesting that yours also has that 'blackened' coating on the scabbard like mine does.
Very nice piece.

Hello Gene,
Thanks, but the scabbard of your kris is of a completely different quality. Your scabbard is well carved, has a polished surface and appears to be of good wood. I would bet its original owner was proud to carry it around in public.
The scabbard of mine is of poor quality wood, roughly carved and no one would like to carry it in public.
My guess is that this scabbard was made to for the sole purpose of protecting the blade while it is carried into combat. The black coating being camouflage. If the scabbard was damaged or lost it would be no big loss.

btw. here is a picture of the hilt i forgot to attach in the first post. The pommel seems to be somewhat atypical to me. This cockatoo head has no crest.

Best Regards,
Thilo

The blade and hilt construction appear to be Maguindanao. You have a early 20c piece from the Maguindanao tribe on the west coast of Mindanao.

Interesting to see sticks instead of metal. Interesting pommel too.

Hello Jose,

Thanks for the classification. :)
Maguindanao and early 20th century was also my guess but i was unsure because of the pommel and the "chopsticks" on the hilt.
The wooden sticks seem to be purely decorative as the asang-asang are fastened by copper bands that go below the metal fittings of the hilt.
I vaguely remember having seen a similar construction with just one wooden stick on a barong but i cannot find the picture anymore.

Best Regards,
Thilo

unusual pommel indeed! the curly cue on the sides goes in the opposite direction. here's a similar pommel:
http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showth...ight=moro+kris

Could it be an "otherside-around" recarved pommel?

I don't see how, with the beak.
I note it resembles the simple Visayan cockatoos some have insisted on calling "knobs"
The sticks down the edges of the hilt would provide a very important modification, creating a positive edge alignment by feel/grip as contrast the relatively round original construction.
Interestingly this is also a more Visayan/Lumad sword feature; a more elongated cross section with narrow flat edges, rather than round.
Both sticks and binding of sticks are nonmetallic organic material, yes?

Is the rear stick by any chance wider than the front one?

The pommel does not appear to be turned around and recarved. And I don't think recycling a wooden pommel makes sense. If it were of ivory or like Rons' kris of whale bone this would be more likely. :shrug:

Meanwhile i removed the protective coating (which was a kind of resin oil btw) and gave the blade a light etch with vinegar. The well controlled lamination is now clearly visible. :)

Best Regards,
Thilo

Hello Thilo,

very nice lamination and a good kris, this was a very good catch. :)

Regards,

Detlef

Hello Tom,
Both stick have similar dimensions: 4mm wide, 2mm high, 95mm long, rectangular cross-section. They are made of wood. The binding looks like hemp and it is/was covered with tar/pitch of some sort. It appears like the sticks were also painted with pitch.

I'm not so sure about the edge alignment theory. While i have no idea how moro martial art looked/looks like, i personally would hold the kris with my thumb resting on the broad side of the blade base for better control. This would provide more than enough edge alignment regardless of hilt geometry :shrug:

Best Regards,
Thilo

Hello Detlef,

Thanks, i was not so sure when i bought it. :)

hmm good point, but I still think it would help the fingers to properly align the power. Indonesian kris are traditionally indexed with the fingers on the blade during use. I'm not sure about kris sundang, and I had been curious. Maybe someone can tell us more about this? Visayan martial arts tend to use a thumb-pushing-on-the-back-edge style of grip for swords, but that might well be a Spainish influence on that Catholic culture.

Another great example of the seemingly endless array of Moro hilt and pommel combinations.

Thanks for sharing. Nice pick up!

That silver handle alone would be mighty slippery when wet .
The sticks and bindings provide a solid non slip grip .
Handy thing in a wet sword .

This seems very unlikely to me.
Moro krisses were made to be ready anytime to fight and kill (what was also necessary as history proofs).
So all the others would be slippery when wet, but this one wouldn't because of the sticks...I think it has another purpose, though I don't know what..:shrug:

The bindings certainly provide grippiness, and they often seem to be an after-market option; sometimes even being added over metal ferules, often occurring alongside/between them. An option some like and others don't does not seem unlikely; it's actually a matter of debate with modern craftsmen and modern sword practitioners; more slidiness or more grippiness? It can be very much a matter of taste. So I'd say that Rick is onto something; apart from its decorative beauty, and its use instead of sheet metal ferules at times by the poor, traditional Moro hilt-wrapping with wire and rattan certainly provides the using value of improved grippiness.
What I wonder is, are the sticks part of a pattern found artistically pleasing alone, or do they impact the grip in a specific way. The Visayan handle is of flattened octagon section. Its front and back flats are notably narrower than the other flats. Sometimes they are even the same, but more often the back flat is wider, often of similar width to the spine of the sword. So this is partly what I am questing around here. Also though, Indonesian blades often have octagonal handles with flat front and back edges; probing; considering.....

I've got my doubts about it being a repair of some sort ... :shrug: :)

Yes Rick, I agree it doesn't look like a repair neither..

It is definitely no repair. The sticks are too small to stabilize a broken hilt or similar damage. If they were broader they could probably serve as some kind of shock absorber.
Aesthetically they follow the asang-asang, so i still think they are mostly decoration or some kind of talisman. :shrug:

I think that these sticks are just a help to keep the bindings at the correct distance.

Regards,

Detlef

Hello Detlef,

good idea,
but the bindings are not on the silver rings but between them. :)

Hello Thilo,

this wasn't to seen clearly. So my assumption don't make sense. :shrug:

The more I think about it I just keep coming back to the fact that these sticks create a similar cross-section to octagonal handles from the Visayan sea, from Sumatra. Such a handle is flat and wide compared to a typical Moro handle. It provides absolutely certain edge indexing to every finger at every time; no optionality or cosciousness about it, with a flat back that the thumb can rest on squarely. This hints at an influx or influence of one or more Visayan or otherwise martial arts influence. Can we date this feature at all? Is there a time span when it was popular?

The rounder Moro handles are more similar in this way to mainland SEA handles. Bubble, thoughts, bubble.......

Does anyone else have a theory or info on the significance behind the matte black coating of the scabbard?

What is it made of? I am assuming the same kind of laquer that they used on hilt wrappings to make them black as well. :shrug:

I know that the black coating in the front of Halmahera shields (salawaku) is from a burned plant-leaf which have a very similar appearance. :shrug: