Dwi Warna or Empat (4) Warna?
 

I don't own this keris but found this on the net. I have permission to use these pictures here.

The pamor is pretty amazing. I have only seen blades with 2 pamors where one side of the blade will have one pamor while the other side will have the other pamor. But here we have a keris where the two different pamor are side by side. But not only that , the 2 pamors changes its position on the face of the blade. On one face the straight pamor is next to the kembang kacang and the wavy pamor is by the aring. One the other face, the position of the pamor changes. It is like there are 4 panels of pamor on the blade. I think the pictures best explain what I mean.

How is this attained? I guess this is rare. Is there a name for such a pamor arrangement?

I forgot the pictures.

So it did go to Singapore :)

It looks better then on the picture from auction house. It was auctioned (and bought) 1848, if we trust the tag on it. A nice example of older South-Sumatran (?) sheath, which perhaps could be also Madura Kacir. The blade looks more East-Java.


As I understand it at the moment, such arranging of Pamor is called Pamor Slewah. Note that this arrangement appears also on Gonjo.

Wished it did but it did not.... :-(

In accordance with what I was taught, I would call this pamor Dwi Warno, ie, two pamors, even though these two pamors are arranged in an unusual way.

I would call a keris with a different pamor on each blade face Pamor Tangkis.

I would also call a keris that had pamor on one blade face, but no pamor on the other blade face, Pamor Tangkis.

However, some people call a keris with a different pamor on each blade face Pamor Slewah, for these people, a keris that has pamor on one blade face, but has no pamor on the other blade face, is considered to be Pamor Tangkis.

Like a lot of things with keris, it depends where you went to school, and who your teacher was.

As to blade origin, I hesitate to form an opinion. The pamor work certainly looks like Madura/East Jawa, but not the garap.

Madura pande moved around a lot, I have a keris that was the state execution keris of Brunei from 1842, and the opinion of many keris literate people who have handled it is that it is the work of a Madura pande.

Alan, does the overall shape of Gonjo and Gandhik look like Madura to you?

No Gustav, not at all, but when Madura pandes moved to a different area they made keris in the style of the area they were working in, what they could not change was the characteristics of their forge work. Thus, we sometimes see Madura forge work in blades from other places, in fact, places all over SE Asia.

As far as i know this keris now belongs to Michael Marlow, who i had thought was a member here. Perhaps i have him confused with another Michael. :shrug:
Part of what i find fascinating about the Dwi Warno on this keris is the arrangement because if you haven't noticed there are not just two pamors on each side, but the two actually switch positions on each side which seems very tricky and pretty cool IMHO. Never seen anything quite like it.
They has been quite a bit os discussion on the origins of this keris on a FB page i frequent. Some people have suggested that the keris is Lampung, which doesn't seem correct to me, though i see some references in the hilt similar to Lampung bird hilts. But the motifs around the base look like they have a Gayo influence.
As for the origin of the blade itself Lampung doesn't seem right at all, but is it possible that it is from another area of Sumatra?

David, as I don't frequent FB pages, I'm not so well informed about the current location of this Keris.

My remark about Singapore was generated by the background furnishing, which looks kind of like the environment our Singapore members are used to live. That's why it ended with :) and was ment as such.

We had a similar hilt ages before here and DHenkel said it would be from South-Sumatra. Batang is South-Sumatra, Sampir could be from South-Sumatra, yet also other places.

And Selut/Pendokok is clearly South-Sumatran and fits the hilt so well, that it could be an original ensemble.

The arrangement of this pamor is unusual, but I do not see it as being any more difficult to make than any multiple pamor.

The individual blocks of pamor are brought together separately onto the core, then welded in place. One of the pamors in this blade is surface manipulated mlumah, the other is miring. The surface manipulation would have been done after the block of mlumah pamor was welded to the core.

For me, this is simply a different arrangement of two pamors on a fairly ordinary blade. As a complete, and fairly nice, but I believe, damaged, ensemble it is a nice piece for any collection. The hilt is really nice --- gading?

But I'm not too wound up about the blade itself.

According to auction description the hulu is wood.

Alan. Thanks for feedback. I am intrigued by your description of the forging process but how would you do a surface manipulation of the mlumah without affecting the other half of the blade with the miring. I can't visualise it once the separate blocks are welded. In this case would it be 4 separate blocks, given the placement of the pamor?

Wood? Well, its still nice, but now it goes down to nothing special at all. Pity.

As to forging.

There are perhaps a couple of ways in which the four separate blocks of pamor could be brought together onto the core. I think that the easiest would be to assemble the four blocks onto the core as a single package and bring together in the one welding operation.

Once assembled as a single block, depending on how that weld was done, the mlumah side of each face can be manipulated to create the pattern, essentially it is no different to doing the manipulation necessary for wiji timun, but you only do one half of the face instead of both halves of the one face. For a skilled pattern welder, easy --- and this blade is the work of a skilled welder.

There are a number of steps involved in this process that I am not prepared to describe in detail, however, the information is available through modern custom knife sources. I cannot go into detail because of undertakings I have given.

Sorry if you misunderstood my wording Alan. By "tricky" i did not mean to suggest it was any more difficult to achieve than other dwi warno blades, just that it is tricky as in unexpected. Still something i had never seen done before. This is a keris i would gladly have added to my collection if it had been offered to me.
I believe the hilt is not ivory, but wood. Am i the only one who thinks the end of the beak broke off at some point and was refinished flat?

Thanks Gustav. I don't see any furnishings in the photos, just what appears to perhaps be an out of focus white marble surface. I did not realize this was possibly indicative of a Singapore environment. I mentioned that Michael Marlow has this keris presently simply as a matter of fact. :shrug: :)

Thanks David, yes, I did misunderstand, I took "tricky" as something difficult to do. I did not understand it as "unexpected".