Ethnographic Arms & Armour - View Single Post

A. G. Maisey · 18th September 2006, 07:37 AM

Yeah, they can sometimes be pretty confusing.

There is a whole batch of handle types that seem to me to be just about equally able to be described as "Madura", or "North Coast". This one I don`t think is one of them , but all these intricately carved handles need to be looked at hard and with adequate references.

The wrongko seems to resemble a Solo gayam , but it is not. The very small differences that could only be pointed out if you had this and textbook Solo side by side give it away. Yes, certainly the overall shape is Solo, but this particular type is associated with East Jawa. I recently acquired a small, old collection of ---I think---8 of these East Jawa keris, and if you see a number of them together like that it is easy to recognise that they cannot be Solo.

18th September 2006, 07:37 AM	#18
A. G. Maisey Member Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 6,697	Yeah, they can sometimes be pretty confusing. There is a whole batch of handle types that seem to me to be just about equally able to be described as "Madura", or "North Coast". This one I don`t think is one of them , but all these intricately carved handles need to be looked at hard and with adequate references. The wrongko seems to resemble a Solo gayam , but it is not. The very small differences that could only be pointed out if you had this and textbook Solo side by side give it away. Yes, certainly the overall shape is Solo, but this particular type is associated with East Jawa. I recently acquired a small, old collection of ---I think---8 of these East Jawa keris, and if you see a number of them together like that it is easy to recognise that they cannot be Solo.