Green, I don't believe that our philosophies vary all that much, but it seems certain that our areas of interest do vary.
I have been handling keris since before I went to school, so probably from about age 4 or so, I have owned keris since I was 12, I started to buy keris before I was 16.
By the age of thirty I had over 2000 keris. These were not all complete, perfect keris, they were keris blades, some were complete keris, many were damaged. I also had a lot of sundry S.E. Asian bladed tools and weapons. In total I had something approaching 3000 objects.
I sold most of these things beginning before 1974, and by 1983 I had only the collection from my grandfather, and perhaps 30 or 40 other items, most were keris.
In 1982 Empu Suparman began to teach me, and from that time I had a whole new perspective on the study of keris.
From 1974 through to 2015 I was spending 2 or 3 months every year in Indonesia and most of that time was spent in Solo.During every visit to Indonesia I went out of my way to look at and handle keris. I would estimate that during each visit I never saw less than one to two thousand keris, and most of these I handled.
I do believe that one of the things that is essential to keris study is to see & handle as many keris as possible.
However, over the time I've been involved with keris I have found that I cannot learn very much by looking at pictures, I need to see the actual keris and preferably handle it.
Link this attitude to the fact that I have a very narrow field of focus these days, and that focus is almost exclusively Jawa & Bali, and you will understand why I have very little interest in a book with a lot of nice pictures and (in my opinion) fairly light weight text.
Jean, it is an element of keris culture in Jawa & Bali, most especially in Jawa, that the scabbard & hilt of a keris is changed relatively often. A fine old keris is considered to deserve the best dress that its custodian can afford to give it. Inherited keris often need to have dress changed to reflect the status of the custodian, a keris that is in the custody of a member of karaton hierarchy will very likely have its dress changed every time the custodian achieves a new rank. During the life time of a single person the one keris can well have a number of changes of dress.
It is only collectors who use Eurocentric standards who value old keris in old dress. For some Javanese nobles such a situation would be at the least, an embarrassment.
I can very easily understand why many noted Indonesian collectors dress their keris in new, bling-bling scabbard & hilt. As Pak Parman said to me, old keris dress is just like an old suit of clothes, when it becomes shabby or out of style, you get rid of it, only the gold, silver and precious stones have any value.
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