Thread: Keris Holders
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Old 3rd October 2015, 12:22 AM   #11
A. G. Maisey
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Join Date: May 2006
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Willem, my 16 year old grandson tells me that he is only permitted a rather low percentage of material sourced from the net in his projects, they have to actually use hard-copy material and give full references. Looks like the teachers have woken up, at least in some places. I remember 15 years ago I knew candidates for Masters and PhD degrees who were getting most of their material off the net.

I thought that overall the holders shown were quite representative of the body of this form. Yes, certainly there were a few roughies there, but very often the genuine old ones are not major works of art. There were a few that were done for the tourist trade too.

In fact virtually all the old ones that I have seen with ordinary families had been carved by members of the family, not professional artists. I believe that this is, in general, the case with these holders.

The art and craft that we currently associate with Bali is principally the result of input to the Bali craft ethic during the 1920's and 1930's. A good place to see what Balinese painting looked like prior to the early 20th century is the Palace of Justice in Klungkung. Its all "wayang style".

All decorative art prior to the puputans was either religious or royal, the common people did not employ professionals for the purpose of ornamentation, they did it themselves, and carving from this grass roots source looks exactly like what it is:- folk art --- at best.

The refined carving that we associate with Bali now began its development during the 1920's and by the 1930's was in full swing. As far as I can work out from personal experience, there was another surge of development in the 1960's and 1970's.

The carving on temples and in other public places in Bali is mostly in stone, but it is very soft stone that has a very limited life, so even on the buildings that are quite old, the carved ornamentation is unlikely to be more than around 50-100 years old. The Balinese ethic is that the carving once done does not need to be preserved, it is the act of creation that honours the deity, not the act of preservation.

With keris holders, I very much doubt that any holders that demonstrate a high level of execution are in existence that pre-date circa 1900, and I'm being extremely generous in my estimate here. Something with a high level of execution from the 1930's I would consider to be about as old as we could expect, and then we need to consider if this holder was actually something produced for use in a Balinese household, or whether it was produced for sale to a visitor from outside the Balinese community. But there have been some exceptionally fine holders, and other carvings, produced by Balinese carvers during the last 40 years.
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