View Single Post
Old 11th February 2024, 07:17 PM   #16
A. G. Maisey
Member
 
Join Date: May 2006
Posts: 6,701
Default

What David has said here is so, but there are other reasons for a keris blade not fitting precisely into the wrongko.

A keris might have been given a new wrongko that came already made, bought from a market, & the fitting has been done by the owner. Not everybody has the necessary skills to fit a blade precisely.

The Bugis style keris often does have a gonjo that stands proud of the wrongko, but just as often, or perhaps more so, the gonjo will sit flush with the wrongko. It seems that over time styles changed, & not every area employed exactly the same style.

The idea of "original" when applied to keris is totally out of step with cultural norms, it is entirely an idea that comes from collectors who are outside the keris culture. As David has pointed out, owners would give their keris the best dress they could afford, in Jawa one keris can have multiple sets of dress, not just one set of dress.

Then there is concept of using one's keris to store wealth, as has often been said to me by Javanese keris literate people, the dress of a keris is just like the dress of a man, it is a set of clothes and can be changed for many reasons. If you have fitted a gold pendok when times were good, there is no problem with selling that gold pendok & replacing it with brass when times are not so good.

The only part of the complete keris that holds any esoteric force is the blade itself, all the dress is simply that:- dress.

By setting one's standards for collection to require that a wrongko must be "original" to the blade & also old, a collector is limiting his collection to keris that have mostly been dressed within the last couple of generations.
A. G. Maisey is offline   Reply With Quote