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Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey
That hilt and selut has troubled me from the time I first saw it, back on AofA in 1975.
I've seen similar, but not the same type, of hilt cups on Bali keris, but those I have seen have never had this sort of lung-lungan motif, which to my eye, in this context, looks out of place. It is a casting, so one would expect to see more than just this single example, my feeling is that this hilt cup has been modified from a Bugis hilt cup.
The hilt I feel can be interpreted as a wooden gerantim, I cannot see any other Bali hilt form that looks similar. It does have echoes of the bondolan form, but the carving reminds me of nothing so much as the gerantim.
I cannot associate this particular hilt form with what I have seen identified as mainland Bali, so I'm inclined to place it as maybe Lombok --- the Bugis hilt cup --- or maybe far west Bali, or even far east Jawa, Banyuwangi.
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I'm not sure i'd say that it troubles me Alan, but i see what you mean. Though the way the cup is fitted to the hilt this doesn't seem to me to be some casual refit from parts that were simply laying around. It is tight, secure and semi permanent, a marriage of intention and it honestly doesn't look like any Bugis cup or motif that i am familiar with.
While i see what you mean about the hilt bearing some resemblance to aspects of gerantim hilts it seems more an amalgam of these two forms, one of which is, of course, not Balinese.