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Originally Posted by GIO
My personal opinion:
clean the blade and, if possible, etch it. A real pamor may appear.
Throw away hilt and scabbard. You will easily find a better hilt, but not a scabbard, also due to the size of the blade.
The mendak (better "UWER" - thanks for correcting me, Jean) is good.
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GIO, while you are most certainly welcome to your personal opinion you may want to consider putting this into Brian's perspective. He is a general collector of weapons who only very casually collects the occassinal keris. He paid very little for this particular example. I doubt he is looking to spend much more to create an "ideal" example of a Bali keris. Given the quality of the blade itself it also wouldn't make sense even to me as someone who specializes in the collection of keris to throw much money at redressing such a blade when it has serviceable dress already. Your suggestion that he throw away the hilt and sheath seems a bit extreme to me. Cleaning and restraining the blade certainly seems worth the effort to return some dignity to this keris, but i am in agreement with Alan that even this apparently touristy style of dress has a place in a well rounded collection. This particular one is actually of better carving than most that i see of this type on the market. I am still left unsure of the origins of this particular dress type and don't know if it was ever acceptable for indigenous ethnographic usage, but as VANDOO points out it is a style that has been in existence for at least 50 years. To properly redress this blade would cost hundreds of dollars and Brian seems happy with the look of the ensemble as a display piece so i can't see why he would want to spend more money than he paid for the thing redressing it.
