Thanks for the compliments.
In fact, the work with Photoshop took a lot of time; I've been playing with these photos for more than 6 months, a little bit at a time. The originals were virtually unviewable in most cases. Next time I go I will have a different camera with me, and an understanding of the problems, so hopefully I might get more and better images.
Jean, if I put on my Aussie hat, I cannot but agree that high end Balinese keris, and in fact virtually all high end keris, no matter from where, are more than a bit too blingy.
However, the cultures from which the keris comes are not Aussie, and the value systems within these cultures use vastly different standards to the ones that apply in Sydney and Melbourne. In the case of Bali, we find that the simple weapon class keris used in the past by peasant farmers, and now worn as dress items by ordinary people, are quite austere, but as we move up the social and wealth register we find that those who have the means and position to express exhuberance most definitely do so. A few years ago I handled a keris that a middle class businessman had prepared for his wedding. The blade was an old, fairly ordinary thing, nothing to make me remember it, but the wrongko was completely covered in finely worked 22 carat gold and studded with real diamonds, sapphires and emeralds, and the hilt was en suite with the wrongko. In the world of bling this was the blingiest thing I've ever seen.The wedding was long past, and I could have owned that keris for something like $200,000.
In my experience Balinese people and Javanese people are much given to personal display. Sometimes that display is not particularly obvious, but where it is not obvious, it is usually calculated to make an impression. Our niece married into one of the wealthiest families in Indonesia. They staged a couple of wedding receptions, and we attended the one in Sydney. The groom's parents used understatement to display their wealth:- the father was dressed in a dusty off the rack, badly fitting suit and wore a black plastic watch; the mother wore a very simple outfit that she had had made in Paris, she only wore one piece of jewellery:- a heavy gold chain supporting a single diamond as big as a pigeon's egg.
We may not like to display our wealth or position, but generally speaking, Balinese and Javanese people do, and they use bling to do it.
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