Ethnographic Arms & Armour - View Single Post

A. G. Maisey · 3rd November 2022, 10:43 PM

Thank you for your comments Bob.

Gustav cut through what I had hoped was going to be a few pages of group investigation, keeping interested parties busy thinking through propositions and coming to conclusions for a couple of weeks, but what he has posted is absolutely correct.

It still might be interesting to look at all the other irregularities with The Knaud, but I believe we can now see that we have all been just a little bit misled for the last 100 years or so.

Here is a link to a very good colour photo of both sides of The Knaud.

https://www.artoftheancestors.com/bl...vid-van-duuren

The overlay is bronze that is permanently fixed, the dark patches on the bronze are copper repairs. We do not know at this point how that overlay was fixed to the iron body, it might have been made and then soldered in place, or it might have been carved into the overlay of bronze at the time when this object was produced.

Anything that we believe we can deduce from looking at photos of this Knaud keris must be measured by the understanding that we are almost certainly looking at a post Majapahit production, probably post Mojo by a few hundred years or so.

But one thing that does come out of this close look at The Knaud is that David Van Duuren's book is now a publication that I believe every truly serious student of the keris needs in his book case, together with notes on tipped in half pages.

In my opinion, Mr. Van Duuren's book has now become just as essential as all the other classic keris publications.

3rd November 2022, 10:43 PM	#19
A. G. Maisey Member Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 6,697	Thank you for your comments Bob. Gustav cut through what I had hoped was going to be a few pages of group investigation, keeping interested parties busy thinking through propositions and coming to conclusions for a couple of weeks, but what he has posted is absolutely correct. It still might be interesting to look at all the other irregularities with The Knaud, but I believe we can now see that we have all been just a little bit misled for the last 100 years or so. Here is a link to a very good colour photo of both sides of The Knaud. https://www.artoftheancestors.com/bl...vid-van-duuren The overlay is bronze that is permanently fixed, the dark patches on the bronze are copper repairs. We do not know at this point how that overlay was fixed to the iron body, it might have been made and then soldered in place, or it might have been carved into the overlay of bronze at the time when this object was produced. Anything that we believe we can deduce from looking at photos of this Knaud keris must be measured by the understanding that we are almost certainly looking at a post Majapahit production, probably post Mojo by a few hundred years or so. But one thing that does come out of this close look at The Knaud is that David Van Duuren's book is now a publication that I believe every truly serious student of the keris needs in his book case, together with notes on tipped in half pages. In my opinion, Mr. Van Duuren's book has now become just as essential as all the other classic keris publications.