This dress is of much finer quality than the "Viking" and the "Anglo" dress, in fact the quality of workmanship is good enough to be Balinese workmanship. However, once again, it does show unmistakable indicators of a Sumenep place of origin. It is very, very far from anything resembling culturally or societally correct Balinese dress. It is quite nice art work. It is not correct Balinese dress in any sense.
The majority of Balinese keris handles are of the bondolan , or a similar functional form. Balinese figural handles come in many forms, I don't think any of these forms can be classified as "raksasa". Any figure that shows fangs can be regarded as demonic, but how it is classified after that is often quite difficult to determine.
The word "singa" means "lion". The hilt shown which I suspect is meant to be taken as a lion is not able to be interpreted as a lion in a Balinese sense, nor in a Javanese sense. The nearest I can come to an interpretation of this carving is that it is a Javanese/Madurese interpretation of a Chinese dragon.
The choice of a keris hilt is always subject to certain considerations in a keris bearing society. The question of who can wear what, where and when is not something that can be easily answered. I could maybe cover the Bali scenario in perhaps 2000 words. This is not really the place for that.
None of the carving I am seeing in these posts is culturally correct.
It is pretty nice carving, all of it. Totally acceptable as art/craft work, but not acceptable in any way as keris dress. A keris is an item of dress that is worn in a prescribed way and in a prescribed setting. It must follow certain rules, just as its wearer must follow certain rules. None of the keris in this elaborately carved dress do follow those rules, No member of any Indonesian cultural group could wear them without generating laughter, and perhaps offence. But they would look pretty nice on the wall behind a bar in some Western country.
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