Two kerisses compared

[Johan van Zyl]

Friends, in concluding this thread I take pleasure in sharing with you a pic of the box I made for my Javanese keris and sheath. Although I am not a carpenter and do not have proper tools, I have enough to allow me to do this sort of thing. It was not easy, and I found I was hard to please! The box itself came out satisfactorilly the first time round, but I had to redo the inner case and red cover material, as I had gone about it the wrong way and it sucked. The pic should show that the job came out tolerably well. Still, I suppose the contents would have been deserving of a much nicer box!

The Bugis keris will get an identical box and innard, but first I will have to make a wrongko for it, and a buntut.

Now the final two pics....... dare I say here will be something to whet your appetites and lead to another bit of stimulating conversation? We know that keris blades are made with a pattern we call pamor, and that the easier pamor to accomplish is the form we call mlumah. We know the definition of mlumah. We also know what pamor miring is, and how it differs from the former. Now where do shapes similar to pamor mlumah and miring occur in NATURE? See the two pics for one possible answer.

Banded Ironstone is a sedimentary rock consisting of alternating layers of iron oxides and shale. I've had this sample in my possession for a long time. In the pics the layers are but millimetres in thickness. It seemed to me to be a natural representation of the patterns that had been crafted by the empus. The one pic shows the rock sample viewed from the top, as in "pamor mlumah", and the next viewed from the side, as in "pamor miring".

This observation struck me as being quite interesting, and perhaps worthy of sharing with you guys. Whether you agree, remains to be seen, but I have confidence.
Cheers
Johan

[A. G. Maisey]

Since we're doing this Indonesian thing, maybe we should consider the relationship between pamor mlumah, pamor miring and Kue Lapis.

Ki Empu gets tired of pounding iron and getting burnt, orders wife to fix him some coffee and cake.

Wife whips up some Kopi Tubruk & Kue Lapis.

Ki Empu eats so much of it that when he goes back to work he's feeling a little bit crook in the guts, makes a mess of of the job he had on the go and has to twist the forging to make it stick together.

And that brothers & sisters is the true story of how pamor miring was discovered.

All because of this:-

[Sajen]

Nice and funny story! Kue Lapis- enak!