Kris of Sumatra?

[A. G. Maisey]

Yes Detlef, you're right, this is rough work. No doubt about it.

Rough work = low price. Its decorative, and even when somebody from Jakarta or Surabaya does go into Jawa Tengah to visit the kratons and candis, their pockets are not lined with gold. If they do buy a souvenir they weigh the cost of the kenang2an against what they need to cut from the budget to buy it. This decorative item is pretty much exactly what ordinary middle-class people buy to take home to a house in the suburbs of Jakarta, Surabaya etc. So yeah, if we're thinking Indonesian tourists, maybe that's legitimate.

But in the tourist centres of Kuta/Legian. or Sanur, or Ubud, or Jogja, the trade in keris and other weaponry sold to tourists collapsed about 20 years ago. As terrorism rose, all countries tightened restrictions on import of all sorts of weaponry, and the citizens of these countries got some pretty restrictive ideas on what they might be able to take home.

For people such as you and I, well, speaking for myself I know exactly what I can take into Australia, and over the years I have needed to educate more than one aggressive Customs officer. I've never had a loss nor a seizure, but I have seen other people who had no knowledge of the law being bullied by Customs officers into surrendering legitimate items.

Word gets around, so these days most people who are outside The World of Sharp, Pointy Things simply will not buy anything at all that they think might cause them a problem. Result:- people from outside Indonesia very, very rarely buy keris & etc as souvenirs these days. The sort of thing Corrado has is actually produced for the domestic market as a decoration. like a plaque, or a wall vase, or a painting.

But, as you point out, there can be local tourists as well as international tourists, so maybe "tourist keris" fits, but I personally prefer "decorative item", and leave the identification of a potential buyer blank.