G`day Andrew,
The word "empu" is a title for a particularly talented poet, or literary person, or artist, and from the artist association, a keris maker.
It can be given by a kraton, but it can also be conferred on somebody by common usage of the ordinary people.
Why are they so few?
Until Dietrich Drescher helped bring keris making to life again back in the 1970's, it was pretty much dead in Central Jawa. At that time, there were still people working on keris, and I know of two people who were working making keris, but who were producing deliberate forgeries and who did not publicise their names. They were not known outside the inner circles of the keris trade. Both these men have now passed away.However, when keris making took off again in the 1970's and 1980's a number of new people became involved . Regretably, after the first little surge of interest from the buying public, interest dropped off, and only a few notable makers were left in the market place.
In Central Jawa the philosophy and ethic behind making a keris is somewhat different to what it is in Madura. This difference makes it a pretty expensive exercise to produce a keris in the traditional Central Javanese way, and it is not something that many people were, or are prepared to engage in with no assurance of a sale. As a consequence there are only a couple of people left in Central Jawa who are involved in keris making---plenty of people involved in the support crafts, such as making wrongkos , pendok, etc, but blades? Very, very few craftsmen left.
The market is pretty much totally locked up by the Boys from Madura who can produce very, very fine work at a fraction of the cost of comparable work from Central Jawa. You could liken the difference to that between the traditional painter, working in a traditional way and applying traditional standards---along with very high traditional prices---and a talented graduate from an art school who is able to produce a painting that looks the same as the master`s work , but lacks the 2 or 3% of finish that might take 90% of the total time.
Market forces have removed people from the market place who could legitimately have expected to become known as "empu", were they still working.
The ASKI, or as it is now known STSI, in Solo has a keris faculty, but in name only. All the recent people it has produced have used their qualification to work in some other area, such as mechanical work in a factory. I don`t think there has been a graduate from the kereis school for perhaps 5 years or more.The original half dozen people from the old ASKI have moved into other areas such as sales, or raising pigeons. It is no good being a skilled craftsman if your product is too expensive for the market place.
I have heard that in Brunei the government supports a couple of empu. I do not know if this is true, and I have not seen work attributed to these people, if they exist. Indonesia is not nearly as rich as Brunei, and I believe that there is absolutely no possibility of the Indonesian nation supporting a craft that cannot support itself in the market place.
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