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Old 26th June 2018, 04:23 AM   #14
A. G. Maisey
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Join Date: May 2006
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I've seen silver hilts made in Jogja, and gold ornaments with similar character to a gold hilt made in Bali. I've also seen silver pendok made.

The pendok starts as a lot of silver beads, these are cast into a block, the block is then beaten by hand into a fan shaped sheet that is left marginally thicker on the edges where the seam will be. It takes a skilled craftsman between two and three days to produce this hand beaten silver sheet from the silver block. The fan shaped sheet is bent around a mandrel (sanglon) to form the shape and the seam and bottom cap is soldered . It is removed from the mandrel, filled with wax and then the chaser embosses it free hand, he uses a wax covered stump as his work bench. When the chasing is complete the pendok is boiled to remove wax, cleaned, polished and stained to highlight the embossing.

The process to make a silver hilt is the same, the silver sheet is fabricated roughly to shape, it is not formed over a wooden or wax carving. When the rough figure has been made the chaser takes over and does all the deep embossing and engraving needed to make the hilt, before the chaser starts work the hilt is filled with wax, when he is finished the hilt is gently heated, then boiled to clean it of wax, when it is clean it is filled with jabung (cutlers wax), sometimes a wooden core will be inserted into the jabung while it is still molten. When the jabung sets hard, usually a couple of days are allowed for this in Jawa, the bottom cap is put in place and is normally held in place mechanically.

The gold work I saw being done in Bali I was not able to follow step by step as I could the silver work, but what I saw of the work, and what I was told by the craftsman seemed to indicate that the Bali process was broadly the same as in Jogja. In fact, at the present time, a lot of supposedly Balinese gold and silver work is done in Jogja. Generally speaking silver smiths are very reluctant to work in gold because they need a totally separate work area for gold in order to reclaim wastage and dust. If the area is not separate the gold wastage and dust gets contaminated by silver.

I have been told of a slightly different way in which silver hilts and similar objects can be produced, and that is by fabrication and embossing in panels, the embossed panels are then soldered together, and the chaser completes his work.

To the best of my knowledge the forming of metal hilts over pre-formed wood and other substances is not practiced in Jawa or Bali.

Shellac can sometimes be substituted for jabung as the filler.

Balinese gold and silver hilts tend towards using quite heavy material, Javanese silver hilts use moderately heavy material, old Javanese silver and gold hilts are not much thicker than foil.
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