[kai]

Hello David,

Thanks for posting yours! Seems it's oddball season...

This is a strange one. Well, it's a bit of a mystery to me anyway. I have never seen either this dhapur or hilt form before. I don't post the blades of my collection very often, but this one has me stumped and i am curious what the consensus will be. I am calling this a patrem for now as the blade length is only 9 inches, but other than that i am pretty clueless.
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The blade is short and stout.a very sturdy little fellow. There is no visible pamor, but that might change if stained. I think someone was perhaps a bit too aggressive cleaning this once as there are some scratch marks left behind. The blade, as you can see is very narrow at the waist and very leaf like. It appears to have a second gandik of a sort at back of the blade and what, in my imagination at least, is possibly intended to represent a putut, a seated, praying figure. None of the carving of the features appears very expert, but there is an over all feeling of quality about this short, but stout blade.

I'd certainly love to see this blade stained!

I believe this blade got crafted with the Bangkinang style in mind; regarding the small size, yours would be in the Bahari class rather than being a real patrem.

However, it's obvious that this blade doesn't follow the classic Bangkinang style and rather presents some exaggerated features. I'm attaching a bad pic of a 13 inch keris blade with similar features from a past auction - will try to get better ones. I am toying around with a (northern?) Malay peninsula origin for both blades - very tentative though!

The hilt is what appears to be very old ivory with black horn at the base. The form seems to fall somewhere between the Javanese planar form and that of the Jawa Demam hilts. There is also black horn at the toe of the sheath stem that helps tie the dress ensemble together. The brass hilt cup is the only thing that seems perhaps a bit off about the flow of the dress.

I can't help with the hilt - don't remember having seen anything similar either. Usually an added horn ring is a repair for a broken hilt; however from the ivory carving one might tend to believe this being original. Could you please post pics of the lower side of the hilt without pendokok and also a peek inside the pesi hole? Horn ring tightly attached?

The pendokok does look very crude and also the fit seems pretty dubious. A small one like in the other keris would look much better IMHO.

The sheath was obviously made for the blade as the fit is superb with the blade riding purposely high in a style i see more on peninsula keris.

Also not uncommon with some more southern keris. While not typical enough to be really sure, this scabbard may well be from northern Malaya though.

Regards,
Kai