Hi there, this blade may also be from Sumbawa. Sumbawa are well known of its creative blade.
However, it is a marvelous piece you have there.

Regards.

Hi khalifah muda.

thanks for the info. However not many people associate this blade to sumbawa attribution. Most said it's sumatera, or palembang.

Could you kindly explain where and why it was a Sumbawa's blade?

Thanks for the compliment. Are you referring to the garap or the pamor or overall?

Sorry I have to ask, since I don't possess good knowledge in recognizing this keris. So I take this chance to learn from all of you guys :o

It's overall for the blade.
For my view the hilt it shall be possessing a Sumatran/Palembang influence.
Sheath wise from my view its has a Sulawesi influence.

Yeah, I agree with that. Thanks for your opinion, khalifah.

Sheath is Sulawesi, and David has shown me just an exact example.

The hilt, I guess it's Sumatran / Palembang, as you do, albeit I was quite suspicious with the motives. It looks like a modern motives, and the carver seems to have the freedom to carve it out without having any strict motive to follow thru. I might be so wrong, but this is the first time I see this kind of motives on a hilt.

However the blade is still a mystery to me. Some say it's bugis riau, sumatran / palembang (I cast my vote on this), and even javanese! It could be well a mixed bag, like alan's opinion.

How about the blade? Do you really think it was a bugis sumbawa piece? Are there specific garapan / perabot that are referring to sumbawa?

Yes, from my view, the blade is Sumbawa prototype/masterpiece as it is more to creative sort of dapur & pamor. Typical to the one i ever browsed with my pair of hands, too bad i didn't have a picture of it.

If the ricikan/greneng not worn off, it can help better in indentifying.

Some typical Sumatran/Palembang piece to share:

Wow, quite a nice piece you have there! Thanks for sharing those pix!

For the blade discussed, it is actually rather broad, and yes it could be a sumbawa as well. However the pamor works is not something I expect from a sumbawa blade. Pardon my limited knowledge, but I've mostly seen sumbawa with nickel pamor, and the pamor orientation is scattered and very seldom with a specific pamor, moreover pamor miring. But I just don't know, I did not seen enough sumbawa kerises to address a valid comments here, thus I just say what I see...

How about the hilt? Did you recognized the influences? It should have major influences rather than a liberty work of art, didn't it?

For the hilt it is hard to say...very subjective....but it has some Sumatran/Palembang influence in the sense of its carving motifs. Borneo also possible. Anyway, nowadays there are alot of skillful keris makers in this region with their own creation.

'Sumbawa - nickel blade' : For your info. Sumbawa do have blades which comprises of metal composite from nickel, other metals and besi baja.

That's my point; I've seen most sumbawa with nickel pamors, and of course the besi baja in the middle. I've seen sumbawa with meteorite pamor too, or claimed to be of meteorite pamor. Since there is vivid differences between nickel pamor and meteorite pamor, so I take it as it is told :)

This blade pamor works are unlike any sumbawa pieces i've ever seen. Obviously no pamor gunungan / junjung darjat at the sorsoran, and I dunno but it doesn't looks like nickel too.

hmmm.... are you seem to be implying that you suspect the pamor of your keris might be from meteorite? We have had many discussions on these boards about meteoric pamor and the general consensus that i took away from those threads was that it is pretty much near to impossible to identify pamor as definitely being meteorite or not without provenance to support it. I am not sure what "vivid differences" you have noted between terrestrial nickel meteoric pamor and one should keep in mind that meteoric pamor generally is nickel, just not nickel from a terrestrial source. :)

If i had to make a call on this keris which obviously has a mix of influences working for it i think i would guess the origins of the blade as Bugis influenced Sumatran. To me the sheath is clearly Sulawesi. Does it have a tight fit? (Was it made for the blade?)
The hilt also seems Sumatran, though i agree that motifs are some that i have not seen before. :shrug:

No, David you got me wrong. What I am trying to say is I've seen a bugis keris with meteorite pamor (not MY keris was having meteorite pamor, I wouldn't dare to admit that unless with proper provenance too ;) ). The bugis keris with meteorite pamor belongs to someone that has learned keris from javanese experts and I did not expect people of this caliber would say something bluntly. I also seen some keris with meteorite pamor from TMII, which were told by people who do tangguhan keris there. But I am not sure 100%, you know...

However, as you said, meteorite also contains nickel but perhaps when it's used for making pamor, the proportions are different from our earthly nickels, so it does make the difference.

hi David,

i think there's some confusion here....i'm getting confused too.. What i'm trying to say was, Sumbawa doesn't only have blade with nickel kinda layout...they have all kind of metals used. Nothing meteorite addressing MOshah's blade in this case.
:)

I was really only address the suggestion that there are "vivid differences" (as in visual differences) between meteoric and terrestrial nickel pamor. I don't think there are and i am not so sure that even the "experts" can tell based on visual observation alone. In fact in our discussions here there was even a question as to whether scientific structural analysis can tell the difference as any structure inheerent to meteorite would be destroyed in the forging process. So i personally take any assertion that a pamor is meteoric with a huge grain of salt regardless of the amount of expertise the assessor might have. :shrug: :)

Agreeable, David.

Some people said that the meteorite pamor can be traced not only looking, but by gently touch it (basically, touch the keris' surface), and it is meteorite if it's texture against keris' texture is rough.

I would never be sure, nor believing everything i heard, but when there is no conclusion at hand, we need something to hang on to until we find the right answer...

Dr Hrisoulas wrote quite an interesting post on Meteoric pamor .
Might be worth sifting through again . ;)

This is from the Classics thread, top of the page .
http://www.vikingsword.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/001122.html

Wow Rick, thanks for the link!

That was deep and technical. But really informative ... :shrug: :shrug: :)

After reading the threads of sumbawa keris by Kai Wee, I think khalifah muda could be right. It is perhaps a sumbawa piece.

Gustav's triple sogokan and Andi's (sipakatuo) blade also looks like a close call, and shows me how diverse a sumbawa can be, in styles and dapurs.