Actually Alan, given that this is the Keris Forum i think that it is best that we keep our discussion specific to keris collecting.
I have been watching this thread with great interest, but think i will add my own thoughts at this time.
I have always collected things. Stamps and coins, feathers, old keys, old cameras, hot wheels cars (i have over 1000
), etc. When things pique my interest before long i find i have a couple, then a few, then a whole collection of them. Each subject of collection is usually driven by a different set of parameters. I must say that when i used to collect feathers i had little interest in the history other than a simple identification of the bird it came from. Old keys just look cool, so i do little research there. Keris are a bit different for me.
My interest in keris began in 1982, but my first find was actually it's larger cousin, a rather impressive Moro kris that i came across in an antique market in rural New Hampshire. I had no idea of it's origins and neither did the seller, but it fascinated me and i wanted to know more, so i bought it. I was living in NYC at the time so i made arrangements to meet with the curator of the arms & armor division at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He kindly gave me a brief background that further fueled my interest. Soon after i saw a street vendor selling a magazine with a Javanese keris on it's cover and bought it. The article was filled with legend and inaccuracies, but it pushed my interest further and lead me to discover the Indonesian variety of keris. As with many i was lured by tales of magick, flying keris that battled each other and pamor made of "star metal" (meteorite). I must say that the more i learned about the keris and it's culture did not diminish my interest. I have always been interested in lore and legend and that is indeed still a part of keris culture even if the stories are just that. I have also made a very long study of magick and mysticism throughout the world and saw ideas about the "magickal" keris blade as another chapter in these stories and legends from around the world. I also tend to have a somewhat different and perhaps more practical approach to the question of what "magick" actually is than most of the Westerners i know. I have studied other animist cultures and perhaps work from a better understanding of the ideas of the "seen and unseen" worlds than most Western collectors do. So as i learned more about the realities of the associated keris cultures and how it fit into their societies i did not find the information a letdown from the legends. The more i read and experienced, the more interested i become.
My first Javanese keris came into my possession a few years after the Moro blade. A friend who likened himself a shaman knew of my Moro blade and said he had this smaller keris he wanted to pass on. It is a well made, but well worn old boy with erosion through the sogokan. My friend (a skilled woodworker) had made the sheath himself, functional, but not in any true Javanese form. It became a ritual blade for me and in many ways is still one of the most important keris to me personally, though it is of little intrinsic value to any collector. While i have still maintained an interest in Moro weapons (and have a fair numbers of them) over the years they are not the true focus of my edged weapons collecting and remain a side interest.
My study on these two blade was sparse for some time, but then i entered the world of the internet and for more than a decade now both my interest and my collection has exploded, mostly thanks to this forum and the suggestion that i contact a certain member here for more information about where to obtain a mendak.
It is true that books can only take you so far and that many of the books on keris merely recycle and repeat incorrect information. Some of the best books i have read towards furthering my understanding of keris are not ones really directed at the subject, but rather the cultures from which the keris developed. I do tend to obtain well produced picture books, not so much for the info in them (which is often disappointing), but so that i have nice detailed images of keris outside my collection to study the formal elements in their design. Sometimes one can develop interesting, if not always verifiable theories based upon simple observation.
So i guess my answer here is obvious. Yes, by all means, knowledge of the society, culture and history from which a collected item comes does indeed enhance the pursuit of collecting those items...for
me.
Of course this study comes slowly for me. I read what i can, but that is never truly enough. I have been in the process of planning a trip to Java and Bali, but it may still be a few years before that becomes a reality. Even then, learning any culture as an outsider is always difficult and my time in that culture will be strictly limited. But it can certainly be said that my interest in the keris, which started with a fascination of the pure form and artistic beauty of the blades is now driven by a much deeper interest in the culture and history of the people to whom this blade was so important. It has lead to a side collection of Indonesian art and artifact (especially puppets) which only help further inform my study of keris.