[QUOTE=Indianajones]Hello Tatjana, to my oppinion your mandau comes from the Kenya subgroup of Dayak near the border of Sarawak. It are the Kenya who generally use this type (form) of handle and always tend to have a 'busy' decoration with lots of scrolls (the Kajan in comparisson have a more archaïc style of decorating) and the use of the protuding 'points' , which are actually depicting leaches, is more used by the Iban subgroup in Sarawak. Hence my conclusion.
sorry to add a correction but the style of the handle is surely Kajan ( not Kenya)
examples of this type can be seen in "In Centraal Borneo "by Nieuwenhuis
also the scabbard is typical Mendalam Kajan style, loose Kajan scabbards in this style are also illustrated in "In Centraal Borneo" those where freshly carved during the stay of Nieuwenhuis so we can be quite sure that this design is indeed Mendalam Kajan.
Kenya handles are mostly of a whole different style but the main difference is that a Kenya is mostly " filling spaces with scrolls,dragon and leech motifs"
The Kayan style is somewhat more developped with more arms,eyes etc.
its typical however that it seems that the eyes carved by Medalam Kajan does have teeth what make them look like gearwheels.
Arjan
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