Keris Malela Unduk Unduk

[A. G. Maisey]

David, the Jakarta based keris group of people did change the rules.

This blade is pure Kemardikan, and that places it outside any traditional framework. It does not pretend to be anything other than what it is, it is not pretending to be Peninsula, nor Sumatran, nor Javanese. Nope. Its Kemardikan and proud of it. It does definitely have some East Javanese characteristics in there as well, but its not pretending to be East Javanese either.

Yes, I agree with you, in older, more traditionally made blades we do find more open-work in Peninsula blades, however since the late 1980's Sumenep, and Sumenep influenced craftsmen, have been making keris blades that display open-work. I had one some years ago that was all open work, top to bottom, a total filigree job.

If we take a look at "Court Arts of Indonesia" --- Helen Ibbotson Jessup, we can see a number of examples of open-work in the broad expanse of Javanese art. Perhaps the most frequent use of open-work as a Javanese art attribute can be found in wayang puppets, and especially in the gunungan.

In keris we can find limited openwork in keris of royal quality, and in other tosan aji. In "Court Arts ---" there is a very nice keris betok that is attributed to the 19th century (a false attribution actually, but that is a different story) that is completely filigreed with a Kekayon motif (Tree of Life, which refers to the Gunungan).

Open work, or filigree work, or krawang work in keris and in other art forms , is not exclusive to objects from the Malay Peninsula, it is common in Jawa, and I think that further detailed research would show that in fact it occurs right across the Indonesian Archipelago.

[David]

I sorry i was not more clear Alan. I did not mean to imply that such open spaces carvings don't exist on keris across the archipelago. However, to my eye the style of the vegetal motif carved into this blade looks distinctly Malay. Your mileage may vary.

[A. G. Maisey]

I guess its pretty much a matter of what each of us can see, to me, this lung-lungan motif in Alexish's keris looks no different to a thousand other lung-lungan examples from all across the region. Isolate it from the keris, put it on a plain background and I couldn't say with any authority where it had been created.

[alexish]

With regards to the sarung of the new Indonesian Malela-like keris, it is actually based on a peninsular Malaysia design. Please see attached pictures. This sarung form is called Kusriwo.

[David]

Originally Posted by alexish

With regards to the sarung of the new Indonesian Malela-like keris, it is actually based on a peninsular Malaysia design. Please see attached pictures. This sarung form is called Kusriwo.

I believe that your final product is arrived at much in the way of that old game of "telephone". That is when someone is given a complex sentence and it is whispered in another's ear down the line until at the end of that line the sentence that is repeated back has only a vague resemblance to the original.
The Malay Kusriwo sampir you present here is already a modern interpretation with some artistic license and flourishes, perhaps a bit more extravagant than the form originally intended. Once in the hands of your Madurese (?) carver that form becomes even more abstracted from what one would expect to see in a Kusriwo sarung.

[A. G. Maisey]

Yes Alexis, David is absolutely correct, the scabbard you have shown a pic of is already a non-traditional form.

I personally feel that there is nothing really wrong with modern interpretations of the old forms, this has happened all throughout keris history, and in fact it is probably one of the reasons for the extremely long time that the keris as an object form has been around so long:- the form and its interpretation changes to suit the needs of the current environment.

Perhaps the important thing is that we recognise what it is that we're looking at and categorise it accordingly. If we regard this rather exuberant scabbard form as a current era, artistic enhancement that uses the keris form as a canvas and then paints upon it, then we have a legitimate object.

It is a similar thing to what happened with the arch-typical Balinese "souvenir keris". These began to appear --- as near as I can work out --- some time during the 1960's. The early ones used old blades, and the scabbard was carved from black ebony, often the carving was of a very high standard. These older "souvenir" keris have now become collectable in their own right, and it is probably correct to say that no representative keris collection that includes Balinese keris is complete without an example of one of these "souvenir" keris.

But as we moved into the 1970's and then the 1980's the quality of these keris fell through the floor, and the later ones are not much good at all.

The point to this rather long comment is this:- if we are going to focus our collecting on current production, non-traditional types of keris, then what we are collecting is modern art, using the keris as a canvas. In this case we need to apply the same standards as are applied by any collector of modern art in selecting what is collectable and what is not collectable.

Those standards embrace basically two things:- form and quality of execution and materials.

Form can be a subjective judgement.

Understanding of quality needs to be learnt.