Jean, this pamor motif is old, and common in Madura blades, it occurs not only in keris but in other blades as well.
"Old Madura" (that is, "Madura Sepuh") I find to be a bit of a catch-all, and pretty freely applied.
What is "old" exactly?
To me "old" is probably something that goes back past, maybe, the beginning of the 19th century. Other people will place it as older, for instance back in the 1970's & 1980's I was often told by keris people in Solo that Sultan Agung was a "new" keris, "old" keris were those that had a tangguh preceding Sultan Agung.
However, now it seems that any Madura keris that precedes WWII can get a classification of "old", even though there are several quite distinct Madura styles that are obviously pre-1940-ish.
The whole idea of tangguh is very, very spongy when we try to apply it to blades of less than excellent quality and less than excellent condition. It was never meant to be used on ordinary blades in the first place. However, everybody now wants to stick a tag on everything. In reality, all this obsession with name tags only clouds the water. It doesn't really mean anything, and it means even less if understanding is missing.
In "Indo-Javanese Metalwork", Lohuizen-Leeuw, Linden-Museum Stuttgart, there is photo of a blade that has been identified as a spear head, it's on Page 158, item 133. It is made of bronze, and attributed to the Eastern Javanese Period (probably King Sindok--C10th.-- through to the collapse of Majapahit). In the photo it looks more like an early keris than a spear head, but that's a bit beside the point -- so to speak -- the interesting thing is that in this very early blade we can clearly see the elements that indisputably place the keris as a representation of the Gunungan, ie, Mt.Meru.
The Gunungan is a representation of Mt. Meru.
The body of the blade is a clear Gunungan form, OK, no surprises there, but when we look at the base of the blade what do we see? Ornamentation that can only be interpreted as foliage. The lower slopes of Mt. Meru are covered with foliage. This blade is a very clear statement that this blade is intended to represent the Gunungan, and with that all of the associated cultural bonds.
Fast forward to the periodic money grabbing, self-congratulatory, egocentric keris festivals that occur in places which might better remain un-named.
How many of the organisers, exhibitors and attendees at these kerisfests have any understanding at all of what they are dealing with?
Their ancestors must be spinning in their graves --- the ones who were not cremated, that is.
We cannot understand any language unless we understand the meanings of the words of which the language is comprised, and the inflections used in its spoken form. Being able to pronounce the words without understanding is useless.
The same applies in the case of the keris:- we cannot understand it, just because we know what one looks like and know a handful of words associated with it. And without understanding, what is anything worth?
In the case of the keris, it seems to me that a great deal of understanding has been irretrievably lost.
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