All I can say is wow! To my understanding you made the dress, does that include the pendok as well? I hope my upcoming question barrage of my impressions isn't bad manners or overwhelming. I really like the burl of the, would we call it a wrangka or a sampir? Burl can be very difficult to carve and your detail is crisp. Is that a sunflower as the main motif in the lozenge carved into the burl? If so is there Indian influence on that detail? Does the rest of the lozenge show Dutch influence? Below the carved lozenge the pendok reminds me of chrysanthemums but I can't think of from where. I would love some pictures of the hilt. I can't see what is going on/who it is. Thanks again for showing us this creation. At some point an explanation if it isn't too personal would be interesting as once something is put out into the world as this has been it takes a life of its own separate from the original intent of its creator. The easiest way to explain this for me and at the same time perpetrate the act is to borrow what Auden said of Yeats works upon his death when Yeat's could no longer interpret his own writings:
The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers.
Now he is scattered among a hundred cities
And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections,
To find his happiness in another kind of wood
And be punished under a foreign code of conscience.
The words of a dead man
Are modified in the guts of the living.
Finally a possible epiphany I had while writing this: If the keris simply represents a house for preferred spirits to dwell in not an exact representation, thus the wide variations in representations of traditional forms, of the spirits themselves, I wonder if that is not why there was a certain secretive nature to keris culture as too many eyes on an object could confuse the object's inter life?
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