[A. G. Maisey]

Jean, the top of this pendok should not be filed down to follow the curve of the gambar , rather, the very slight step from the gambar face down to the foot of the gambar that joins to the gandar should be deepened very slightly and the step itself inlet to accept the top of the pendok. By deepening the front of the gambar foot & the gandar it would be possible to pick up a couple of millimeters to allow the pendok to be moved back, and this, combined with the deepening of the step should give sufficient depth to permit acceptance of the edge of the embossing by the gambar. The back of the gandar will then sit proud of the pendok, it will need to be filled, I prefer a very thin sliver of bambu for this, but layers of cloth or even a piece of cardboard will do the job.

If the pendok were to be free of embossing and engraving, or the border at the top was to be sufficiently wide, filing the top to a curve would be preferred, but the presence of the flowers on this one creates a difficulty, and personally, I would not want to risk damage to the embossing that could be seen.

This is a job that requires some woodcarving skill, very sharp small tools, I prefer dentist's probes and scalpels (most dentists get rid of probes and used scalpels pretty regularly), and a great deal of patience.It does not change the structure of the wrongko, all it does is to create a tiny inlet that cannot be seen, something even less than the normal maintenance carried out on the mouth of a wrongko.

I have suggested this method rather than the alternative, because wood is easier for a layman to work with than is silver or nickel. This inlet approach would be my first preference if I did not have access to a Solo craftsman.

As David has pointed out, for craftsman living in a Western society, a new collar would not be too difficult to make. But I do not know what sort of western craftsman could do this job, I doubt that a fitter/machinist would be appropriate, nor a tool maker, possibly a sculptor, or perhaps a jeweller. But what would the cost be? Western pay rates are very much higher than pay rates in Indonesia. I believe that if any of us wanted to fit a new collar, we would need to make it ourselves. I have done similar work to this in the past, it is a lengthy, fiddling job and requires a lot of patience.

To make a new collar (lis) would be my second choice if I were to be doing the work myself. Obtain a small block of silver slightly larger than the gap to be filled and carve it to fill the gap. It would need to be a very neat fit to the wood, the height of the face of the collar above the pendok would be only about one to two millimeters, the junction of collar and pendok would be undercut to permit a very small acceptance of the top of the pendok, and the cross section would be "D" shaped.

Of course, the preferred solution would be to have it repaired in Indonesia. I used to know a man who could do this and not make a mess of the job, but he died about 20 years ago. Who might be able to do a neat repair now is very questionable.

David, what you say about the hilt angle is absolutely correct, in terms of a Central Javanese kraton, however, this keris is not Central Javanese and was not intended for kraton wear. A keris worn by a farmer or a carpenter or a storekeeper is not subject to the same regulation as a keris worn in a kraton setting. Most particularly so when the keris is in Madura, and the kratons are in Central Jawa.

Then there is the problem of obtaining a perfect hilt angle in Central Javanese terms:- the mendak cannot be adjusted, to adjust hilt angle the hilt would need to have the existing hole filled with a dowel and be re-drilled, easy enough to do, but something that I would not want to do for this keris.

The question of whether or not the wrongko is original to the blade is to my mind totally irrelevant. This question of "original to the blade" is something that seems to be of great importance to collectors based in Western societies, for a genuine pusaka keris it might also be of some importance , especially in Central Jawa, but for the keris of an ordinary person, and for a non-pusaka keris it is, in my experience, something that is not considered important to the vast bulk of of the populace in the keris bearing societies of Jawa and Bali.

We need to think of the keris in its totality as:- male = wilah, female = wrongko, hilt = guardian. We do not let a beautiful woman, or even a not so beautiful woman, go unspoken for if she is divorced or her husband has died. We do not refuse to accept a gate keeper if he has worked for several people previously. We need to apply this way of thinking to the keris.