Origin of my "mystery keris"

[sirek]

all thanks for your comment,

I take the picture again, but now taken as discussed, and see if I have understood it correctly.
So the next time I place a picture, I hope it's good enough to be discussed.

Like Heinz i'm also relatively new and a "uninformed" keris collector and we always want to learn and increase our knowledge if possible

and in my opinion that is what counts, to learn from others what yourself do not know, or put in the right direction

[A. G. Maisey]

Hienz, I do not consider this to be a useless thread, on the contrary, I consider it to be quite valuable, because it has allowed us to come to terms with a recurring problem.

That problem is the presentation of images of keris that will permit a fair comment to be made in respect of the keris.

The problem with the images that you posted is not so much in the actual photography, but in the processing of the image data after you took the photograph. Regrettably much of what we see in a digital photograph depends upon what we do with the image data that the camera has collected.

What you need to do is to crop, re-size and rotate your image before you post it.

To do this you need some sort of software.

I use Photoshop, which is pretty much like using a 12 gauge shotgun to kill a mouse, but there are a number of free photo processing programs that can be downloaded from the web.

Perhaps somebody with more knowledge in this subject than I have can make some recommendations?

Sirek

Thanks for your new image. Yes, that's good, we can now see pretty much what this keris looks like.

However, as I have already noted:- it is an image of a keris, not a keris.

Because of this any remarks that are made are always subject to the caution that an opinion can be altered if the actual keris were to be examined.

For me, there are several slightly confusing elements in your keris. Some of these elements point to a Madura origin, some point to a Central Javanese origin, some could be interpreted as East Javanese, but not Madura --- Madura is a part of East Jawa.

Based upon what I can see, I would only be prepared to say that this keris is probably Javanese --- which doesn't really tell you any more than you knew before we started.


EDIT re software

Hienz, you may care to have a look at this page:-

http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/pix...eephotoedw.htm

[Rick]

I see a lot of pitting in Heinz's blade; pitting that is not seen on other examples shown in this thread .

[A. G. Maisey]

Yes Rick, so do I, and it is fairly uniform pitting, however, I'm not prepared to guess at origins based only on this pitting--- I'd like to see what the blade really looks like before I make any comment.

[Rick]

That's why it was just an observation Alan .

[A. G. Maisey]

Yep. Understood.

[Greybeard]

Originally Posted by Rick

I see a lot of pitting in Heinz's blade; pitting that is not seen on other examples shown in this thread .

Yes, I have never seen this kind of pitting on another keris in my collection.


Thank you, Alan, for your valuable recommendations regarding posting pictures. I'll try it again later.

Heinz

[sirek]

thank you all for your effort,

To adjust the size or improve photo's you can try:
PICASA is a easy to use program and it's free.

http://picasa.google.com

[Greybeard]

Many thanks, Sirek. Actually, my son took the photos with his mobile phone (maybe a good digital camera would be better ...) and tried to process them. He will visit me this weekend, so we'll see what can be done. Nice side-effect: My son is starting to be interested in keris,
too ...

Regards,

Heinz

[A. G. Maisey]

I had decided that I would not comment further in this thread, but I have taken your most recent image Sirek, and run it through Photoshop, and what I can now see probably does deserve a few words.

A great many of posts that we see in this Forum are aimed at identfying the origin of a keris, or a keris blade.

When we begin to discuss origin of a keris blade we are involving ourselves in a Javanese --- or possibly originally a Solonese --- system of classification that evolved for certain specific purposes. Originally the system was very probably only meant to be applied to blades that could be considered as a store of wealth in Javanese society. It was never meant to be applied to every blade ever made. However, in recent years collectors and dealers alike seem to want to stick a tangguh name on everything. Naturally this has distorted and lessened the value of this system of classification.

There are a number of indicators that somebody who understands tangguh will use to classify a blade.

The reason that I have decided to comment further on this blade of Sirek's is that his blade displays quite clearly some of these indicators.

In this blade we can see a high and distinct ada-ada that continues to the point, an elongated blumbangan that has the approximate shape of a brick that has been stood on end, a weak kembang kacang, an external ron dha that has a form approximating the Surakarta form, there is kruwingan in the blade, there is kusen, there is tungkakan and build up of rust between blade and ganja has pushed the ganja away from the blade base, the blade itself is proud and of good proportions (its pawakan---overall appearance), the length from the last luk to the point is marginally too long, the sogokan appears to be undercut and to have a round bottom, the poyuhan is neatly pointed, the curve of the sogokan is gentle like wading bird's beak, the pamor is mlumah (wos wutah), but in the main body of the blade that pamor has been reduced to a narrow strip covering the ada-ada, the jenggotan and greneng are either residual, or extremely badly cut--- I cannot judge which from the photos.

If I consider all these factors , there are two that for me are the most important:- the shape of the blumbangan, and the overall look of the blade, what we call the pawakan.

The major classifications of keris from within the Island of Jawa that have an elongated blumbangan are Majapahit, Surakarta, Banten ( usually), Kartosuro (sometimes), and generic East Jawa (sometimes)

The pawakan of this keris eliminates all possibilities except Surakarta, Kartosuro and Banten.

The kembang kacang, greneng and the elongated point eliminate Surakarta.

The pawakan seems to be too proud to be Kartosuro.

Based only on what I can see in the photos I am inclined to give this blade as Banten, and possibly from around the period 1800.


I've done something here that I am very, very loathe to do, because you can be as wrong as it is possible to be when you try to play this game based on pictures, and I could come to an entirely different opinion if I handled this blade. The quality of the blade is not high, its condition seems not to be particularly wonderful:- these factors can contribute to severe error.

However, in these photos we can see clearly many of the things that we need to consider when we set out to classify a blade according to geographic point of origin, and because of this I thought it would serve as a good example to illustrate what it is that we look at to try to classify a blade.

It should be noted that I have only identified some of the indicators here, the ones I can see from the photos.