Question about Kris
 

Hi, even though I have been on the forum for a while, I have never posted anything in this subgroup. Simply because I have never owned a Kris. This morning I picked up three kris, a tombak and a small parang or something like that from someone who had moved into a smaller house. His father took it with him in 1949 after being deployed as a soldier in the war that the Netherlands waged in Indonesia.
The condition of the sheaths of the kriss is very poor, one is glued and the other is broken.
I have tried to find out a few things myself, but there is so much information that I can't make sense of it. Because I know nothing about the kris, my question was whether it is possible to determine how old they are and whether and how I can best clean the blade. In my opinion they are very dirty.
I also received the folded rug under the kriss and I believe it is also from the same region.

Thank you in advance for your response.

well, since your request appears to have been unanswered , I'd try to have a go.

Your krises aren't made yesterday , that is for sure, but to exactly determine how old they are would be very difficult.


Conditions are not unusual for krises but they are not in the best condition and it will take time and money to restore. Some elements of the kris such warangka, gandar, pendoks , mendaks and ukirans (various elements composing the sheath , ring and grip) can be changed and often times have been changed before in a Kris' life , especially if very old.

But refurbishing an old blade, to a higher or lower degree, may offend someone and leave indifferent others and besides, depending where you live in the world ( I guess in the NL?) you may find easier or more difficult to have repairs done or to access parts and the people whom can adapt parts to your kris. If you are in the NL get in touch privately and I will give you some pointers to where you can have at least some of the work done.

From what I can see the krises are from Solo and show blades which are interesting and pretty old, again how old? Perhaps 100 years old ?


I don't know that the tombak is from Java and the same goes for the other blade as for the cloth. To me they look like they may be from other origin, the cloth looks Batak. It is not a rug.


They look like most Dutch colonial collected weapons probably acquired in Java (as most pieces are from there), this kind of stuff , in this condition, is really not unusual in the NL which is , reputedly, the second richest of krises area of the world outside of South East Asia.


If you are in The Netherlands, as I suspect, you may find that there are people able to clean with the traditional methods your blades , in other parts of the world other than SEA this is not as easy.

Having the other parts restored is not as easy but I see only the warangka of one of the krises broken in 3 pieces... it can be restored but you will always see the repair .

I pretty much agree with Milandro here. You have a bit of an advantage living in The Netherlands. While the basic cleaning of keris blades is relatively easy, restaining with warangan is a more difficult job, but i believe that in The Netherlands you are likely to be able to find some with experience who can do that job for you.
As far as that nasty repair job on the sheath, i will disagree somewhat with Milandro. IF when you take that apart and clean off all the old glue you find that all the original wood is fully intact i thing you might be able to repair that hilt to the level that the repair would e hardly noticeable. Even with missing areas of wood i have seen some of our members do amazing fill work that is pretty seamless. If this is not your skillset some well skilled person could do it. I have seen remarkable wood repairs on these pages that might amaze you. Whoever did this repair in the first place was unnecessarily sloppy.
Two of your keris need new mendhaks, either because they are missing or beyond repair. These are easy to obtain online or from a dealer in your home country.
I think these can all be considered antique, but not really old. Perhaps late 19th to early 20th century.

Thank you for your detailed answers! I do indeed live in the Netherlands. To be completely honest, Krissen never really interested me. Probably because they are offered here so often. However, these were so cheap that I couldn't refuse them. Now that I have them I find them quite interesting. I'll just leave them as they are for now. Restoring them would probably cost many times more than they are worth.
As for the cloth I received with it, after some research it probably comes from the province of Lampung and is called a Tapis.

Please don't let the blades in this state, they show red rust, just clean them with WD 40 or oil and 000 steel wool, otherwise you can find them after a few years beyond any restoration!

I understand what you mean about restorations that end up costing many times more than the items themselves. That is why many of us endeavour to learn how to do these restorations ourselves. But certainly it is not everyone's forte.
But i do agree with Detlef that you should at least attempt to do a minimal amount of maintenance on these blades to eliminate any active rust or they will only continue to deteriorate. The basic cleaning of a keris does not take too much skill, just a bit of time and patience. There are quite a few threads in our archive on this subject, But this thread should help get you started.
http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showthread.php?t=23934

Dear all,

The keris in the middle is in decent shape; the one below should benefit from warangan, too.

The tombak looks Sunda to me. More close-ups of the batik needed.

In my experience, these colonial collections are rarely limited to a single cultural origin.

Regards,
Kai

Everything shown here is absolutely able to be brought back to life, and is well worth the small amount of work involved to do so.

Cel7, if you feel disinclined to undertake this work, perhaps you might consider passing these items to somebody living near to you who would welcome the opportunity to bring these cultural icons back from oblivion.

This discussion group has a number of people who are members & who live in The Netherlands.

After reading your messages I decided to give them a makeover. Fine steel wool and a little oil will work wonders:). I leave the sheaths as they are.