[kai]

Hello Godfried,

Apologies, I did not saw your reply! Keep posting and the moderators can get you off probation status which helps to keep the flow of discussions...

Your responses are a bit tough to differentiate from mine. In the reply window you can select/highlight any piece of text and hit the citation button (yellow icon with text in it): This will place quotes around the cited text and allows to respond to sections separately (you can even keep several layers of quotes, if needed).

No not really. Some correspondence about a certain symbol on a Mandau and a discussion with Albert about a Mandau of mine made of meteorite steel. (I will post that discussion on the forum soon).

I'm looking forward to seeing that piece! Mandau blades with contrasting pamor are known - most seem to originate from the coastal regions though (Malay/Indo influence like in Kutai, Banjar, Brunei, etc.).

BTW, most of the bold pamor throughout Indonesia was not achieved by utilising meteorite but usually constructed from iron ores with different amounts of trace elements.

Round 1900 from a dutch officer in the army

Thanks, always good to know pieces with established provenance!

The circle in the middle is not round but interrupted. The raised edges of the Tumpal motif have "teeth" on the inside. That makes me curious what it is exactly

Yes, that I was referring to regarding it possibly being a spiral, too. OTOH, these circles often exhibit 2 gaps as well...

I don't think those are teeth - usually those tumpal are partly filled with what might be considered floral motifs; a tumpal aka Mt.Meru is associated with vegetation. Not sure if such connotations hold true for Borneo though.

In any case, the spiral has many meanings. That often makes it very difficult for me to estimate the correct meaning.

As mentioned, it will likely be several meanings rather than a singular "correct" one. It may usually be tough to impossible to establish the meaning(s) envisioned by its carver.

That's why I joined this club, in the hope that experts can tell me a bit more about it

We're all learning together - no expert can claim to know it all.

[I]I did. Nieuwenhuis, Shelby, Carl Bock Hose and McDoughall etc all read.

Good start - continue and keep asking questions as well as making own observations; at this level of detail much needs to be done I believe.

In 1982 I was invited to one of the last "Gawai Kenyalang" parties on the Baleh River. And in 1993 I made an authorized expedition ( sponsored by the Ministry of Forestry of Indonesia and Holland and the World Wildlife Fund
with 3 other westerners and native porters from Upper Mahakam to Bandjarmasin following Carl Bock. I have only started collecting mandaus for the last 4 years.

That's quite a trip (took CB about a month of travel)! I'd probably have opted for Schwaner's trip (or a full transversal if enough funding).

In the eighties we started to see large-scale devastation advancing into the remote interior. Sadly, things have only gone worse and worse and resulted in heavily compromising if not completely destroying the livelihood of all traditional inland communities...

And indeed during my stay in Sarawak and Borneo (a few times) I visited many longhouses and saw many Dayak objects and indeed the diversity is enormous.

Yes, it's a vast island with rugged terrain and a lot of old ethnic groups that kept evolving culturally - it might be better to avoid referring to "Dayak" and be as specific as possible.

But here on the forum there are many more people who know a lot more about Mandau's than I do.

We certainly appreciate some impetus to discuss things Borneo more often since some of the regular core contributors left for good (Ben, feel free to chime in whenever you get bored! ) or just got busy with life/family/you-name-it... Any initiative to start discussions here is most welcome!

Regards,
Kai