Mataram Wedung

[mariusgmioc]

Lovely!

The blade shows quite clear signs of very old age, so late 16th - early 17th C seems to be quite realistic.

Thank you for sharing it with us, and thank you for the information to come with it!

[David]

We have this illustration which i believe comes from Raffles of a gent wearing both a keris and wedung. So this would be very early 19th C as Raffles History of Java was first published in 1817.
It should be noted that women within the keraton were also known to have worn wedung.

[Athanase]

Just to compare, here is my Wedung. It is of course much more recent (I suppose XIXth century). The previous owner polished the blade but it does not seem to have pamor.

[David]

Thanks for posting Athanase. Yes, this looks like a nice old wedung and i think 19th century may well be correct. I don't really no enough about them to be completely accurate, but i suspect this is a Surakarta form from others i can compare it to, though i might be missing some subtlety of form that places it elsewhere. A shame someone saw fit to polish the blade. If you could manage to stain the blade i believe it would have a better look.

[ariel]

Here is mine. Seems to be pretty old and fully original. Some wood got rotten, horn hook was broken and repaired who knows when.
Any guess-timates of age?

[A. G. Maisey]

I'd give both as Surakarta, and both as 19th century.

Athanase, if this wedung was mine I'd be using cold gun blue on it. Repeated applications will give a very deep blue, approaching black. It is even possible that there might be a metal treatment that will blacken it. Try sculptors supplies for a black treatment, and gun shops for the cold blue.

[ariel]

Thanks Alan.