ivory balinees

[David]

Originally Posted by brekele

Smoky (fumigation) way is normally way that people in Bali/Lombok coloring their bone or ivory hilt to get caramel-brown or even antik dark-brown look.

Beside the unusual gandar i have never seen a selut (what's the Balinese term?) quite like that on a Bali hilt. I am guessing that this dress is a bit newer than the blade and probably aged a bit with smoke and other methods. And i am not really sure, based on the photos alone, that this material isn't bone instead of ivory.
But new or old, bone or ivory, it is attractive and well executed.

[brekele]

From experience, some guys out there in lombok specially, turn the gandar from bugis-sumbawa keris (with javanese keris blade) into balinese keris look only in one day because there are some a month tourist came and interest with balinese keris complete with all those bling bling (ivory,silver,gold etc ).
I interest too sometime so far the keris look nice :-)
So..base on that experience, the gandar on this keris is actually belong keris bugis or keris bugis-sumbawa. I never see OLD balinenese keris sheath (gandar) with three small silver stripe line decoration. That is my opinion about this keris.

Hey, the keris perabot look nice well made.

[Battara]

Very true David - the selut is not traditional Balinese.

You also bring up an interesting point about the smoking - if this were truly an old hilt, for example, then the low spots and not just the raised portions would be darkened.

[Rick]

The buntut is quite outside my experience with Bali dress .