Arsenic or realgar for Keris etching?

[A. G. Maisey]

The biggest supplier of warangan in Solo is a "Shop With No Name" --- but everybody knows it as "Toko Vera", in Pasar Gede , one street west of the market. This shop wholesales to other shops in Solo and also sells retail.

Unless somebody is buying outside of Solo and bringing the stuff into Solo themselves, they will be getting their supplies from Toko Vera.

For a long, long time Toko Vera had drums of warangan that was very good stuff, and back a few years, it was not really all that expensive, however, the old stuff eventually ran out, and the only new stuff they could get was from India. As I have already remarked, this new stuff is not very reliable --- sometimes you can get an acceptable job from it, but other times you cannot --- and it is not cheap.