Quote:
|
Originally Posted by RSWORD
Unfortunately, I think a prior owner has sanded the blade because there are a lot of surface scratches and I don’t know how this may have impacted the look of the areas you believe are poorly carved. It doen’t seem awkward to me. It is a substantial blade seemingly meant for business.
|
The areas that are poorly carved are the Greneng, the Sogokan and Lambe Gajah. I see the scratches you refer to and that may indeed have come from someone aggressively trying to clean this blade, but such cleaning would not have caused these specific aspects of ricikan to appear this way. The greneng seems to have been carved by someone who did not fully understand ron dha or exactly what he was supposed to be carving in the greneng. Unless, of course, someone less skilled tried to receive them at a later date. The sogokan are stiff and fade off at the top end. The Lambe Gajah don't seem fully formed, parts of it just being a cut line. All these ricikan seem awkwardly executed to my eye. The luks, on the other hand, seem rather well formed and as i stated before, this is not an easy job, especially when there are so many. So it is not that i thing the smith was not skilled. A Javanese blade with this many luks (21) is highly unusual. Coupled with what seems to be a lack of understanding about carving ron dha in the greneng i am left with the belief that this blade may have origins outside of Jawa in spite of the dress form. I agree that the blade does indeed seem to be battle ready.
