Appreciation

[David]

Like Rick i grew up on the ocean (or close enough to get to in a 20 min. car ride) in an area that historically saw a lot of sailing, boat building, fishing etc. I suppose i had very early dreams of going to sea and found fascination at a young age with whalers and their travels to exotic places like the South Seas. Read Moby Dick and Treasure Island at a very young age and devoured historical books on whaling and pirates. So right there i suppose there is the set-up for a love of the South Seas and swords. But this does seem, at least to me, to be a bit of a given for most children, at least in the western world. Sort of like my early interest in dinosaurs. I mean, isn't that every small boy's interest.
I have also always had a very strong interest in anything old, so even as a kid i loved kicking around flea markets and antique stores. They have always been like museums to me, except that if you have the money you can actually buy the stuff and bring it home with you. But even people's old junk is interesting to me, appealing, i suppose, to the sociologist is me.
Now i also have always had a strong interest in science, the stars, space travel and science fiction. Again, not all that strange for small boy growing up in the American culture. I have also been a collector of things since i was very young and have always collected rocks, fossils, shells, coins, stamps, feathers, old bottles, old cameras, etc. Yes, this drives my wife crazy as i still have substantial amounts of all these collections about the house.
As a teenager i began to find interest in eastern philosophies and mysticism. My mom used to read stories of Greek mythology, Native American legends and folktales to me as a child that were all packed with acts of remarkable deeds and magick. This led me onto a spiritual path and a strong interest in the concepts of magick and how different cultures apply themselves to magick and the search for spiritual connection. So this has been a focus of study for me for the past 35 years.
So, one fine day in 1981 i was on vacation in New Hampshire and i was kicking around an antiques flea market. I discovered a Moro kris that just grabbed my attention and imagination. Neither i nor the seller had any clue what it was, but of course i had to have it. I was living in NYC at the time so when i got home i took it into the curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art to find out what i had bought. He IDed it as Moro and somewhat misleadingly discribed them as pirates and spoke just a bit about the mystical connection the Moros had with these swords. I had to know more, but i didn't have much luck. No too much later a self-styled "shaman" friend of mine was leaving town and wanting to lighten his load. He knew of my interest in my Moro kris and offered to sell me a Javanese keris he had. I could see the connection in the blade form, but didn't really fully understand it at the time. Still, i had a hard time finding any information, not really knowing where to look. Then i just happened to find a Hilton Horizons travel magazine that a street book vendor was selling with 2 javanese keris on the cover. Inside was the article "Beauty, Magic and Powers of the Keris" with numerous full page color photos. It describes a number of legends of the keris and the (again misleading) notion that all keris were made from meteoric pamor. So we now have this incredible convergence of life long interests for me. The South Seas, pirates, magick and mysticism, heroic legends of valor, glory and bravery and, last, but not least, star metal from outer space. And as if to add just one more synchronicity i come to discover that one of the early accepted published works on keris was written by Gardner who i was already well aware of as the father of modern Wicca. Gentlemen, i think this is what is commonly referred to as "The Perfect Storm".
It took a few more years until i discovered the internet before my collection really began to flourish. I must say that i blame this site. The only other reference i had managed to find up until then is the wonderful coffee table book Court Arts of Indonesia, but stumbling upon this place was like a godsend.....well, perhaps not for my pocket book. From 1981 - 2004 i had collected only the 2 blades. Since then i have added well over 50 blades to my collection.

[A. G. Maisey]

I most sincerely thank you all, gentlemen.

The responses that are coming in now are exactly in the order of what I was looking for, and they demonstrate, I believe, the emotional foundations of our shared interest, not only that, but those emotional foundations seem to have a distinct similarity , a similarity that in all cases stretches back to the time when we were children. None of us are now capable of considering any keris in the absence of that stored experience that stretches back through our lives and creates a mindset that automatically comes into play when we bring the keris to mind.

Seems to me that we have "bought the story", and cannot give it back.

I do hope we will continue to get further contributions to this thread.

Dr. David, it seems I have had some dealings with your relatives.

I have visited that musium at Kurnell when I was a kid, and I also made purchases from several antique dealers who had shops in Sutho. I bought a Moro keris from a bloke in the arcade that runs through to Eton St., and I bought a shamshir from a dealer who had his shop down where the old movie show used to be in Boyle St.. In fact, there seemed to be several dealers and an auction room in that Boyle St. location, they changed position from time to time, and might have even been the same person, I don't know.I bought a few other things from the Boyle St. dealers too, I forget what now, but they got regular visits from me.

Sutho has changed a lot now. Used to be a blacksmith in Boyle Lane. Still got and use a spud bar that my dad got him to make from a truck axle in 1948. One of my kids recently bought a yuppy style townhouse in one of the new little dead end streets that sit in behind President Avenue, just up the road from where I went to school in a weatherboard classroom with no heating in winter, and no insulation in summer. President Avenue was a gravel road then.

Time changes all things.

[Rick]

"Time changes all things ."

Is that not one reason we collect ?
An attempt to freeze (in a tangible form) that which is being lost .

[BluErf]

David, there are many points in your experience that resonates strongly with mine. The keris is like the jack that we use to plug into "the Matrix".

For me, years after my initial connection and bonding with the keris, I had a second "epiphany" of sorts. That was when I got in touch with the North Malay Peninsula kerises. It is hard to describe, but it had to do with the beauty of the flow of lines in the keris blades, the sheaths and the hilts, and the indescribable aesthetic presence that top-class pieces exuded. It changed the way I looked at kerises, and a keris was no longer just a seemingly pretty and interesting thing that I collect. It had to have that 'balanced flow of the lines' perfectly melded with the natural beauty of the organic parts and the man-made beauty of the metal parts. The keris became something that captured the intangible inspired vision of the makers. Something wondrous taken out of the unseen realm and given shape using temporal materials... It was a whole new experience for me, and I guess it is true that I'm looking for my "next fix" in my collecting journey, and I haven't been quite getting a sufficiently high dosage... ...and it sometimes drives me mad thinking about it...

[A. G. Maisey]

No Rick, I don't think so.

It may be one of the reasons public collections are put together, but I am increasingly certain that the reason we --- that is, you, I and other private collectors collect is based purely in emotion.

The idea of conserving something may come as a later, logical addition to our primary emotional drive, but without emotion at the wheel, there would be no collection to conserve.

[Jussi M.]

Greetings,

What can be said that has not been put forth already? I´ll add a spin:

Buying is a ritual.

Acquiring new pieces to ones collection is a task of advancing the "whole" of which the act of acquisition - the ritual - is a tangible part of. The "whole" in question is the egotistical/spiritual pursuit of becoming one with something/separating oneself from the current. - Escapism or pursuit if you will.

The collection per se is thus a vehicle one uses to get to ones desired destination which, of course, is an oxymoron as the more experienced/jaded the collector becomes the further the destination appears as there really is no destination to be reached by the act of collecting. This so unless we see the process of collecting per se as the destination by which time you realize this your original motives have given way to a new set of motives, which in turn feed the phenomena from another perspective until yet another layer of motives surface. This is what we see as maturation though it really is just a new beginning; a newly found amateurism and the joy that comes with it. Or, the acceptance of a failure which gives way for a new attempt from a different angle. Thus the process of collecting is, in itself, the desired destination in motion.


The logic behind?

You are what you buy - you want to become one with what has previously described in this thread as the story? - you become one by performing the ritual(s)!

Or rather, in you subconsciousness you rationalize it to be so. There was a time (speaking from a typical Western mindset now) that we were what we did. As the modernization brought fragmentation and multiple virtual and real realities that shattered the route of becoming by doing a new route was established: becoming by consuming. On a consumer culture we manifest and actualize ourselves (again speaking from the typical Western mindset and surroundings) by consuming. Thus the acquisition of kerises (buying) on a way really does, on a perverted way of sorts continue the original tasks the keris originally stood for. On a way perhaps the roles of the keris have not changed but the surroundings and the ways in which we fullfil and describe these roles in these surroundings have.

What we are discussing here is, after all, (consumer) behaviour.

If it is so that consumerism and marketing have taken the role (again speaking from the typical Western viewpoint) of religion and spiritualism then the act of collecting is a religious/spiritual ritual. Yes?

Can it be so that the original keris culture has not ceased to exist but that it has - partly - found new ways to express itself on the 21st century via and by the collecting community that centers on it?

So, yes. I agree that the story is it. What I am interested though is what gave initiation for the story and motivates it if not escapism or pursuit as put forth above?

Thanks,

J.

[A. G. Maisey]

Jussi, I feel that what you have given us is what I would categorise as "modern marketing theory" :-

the same psychological game that (supposedly) gets us to buy that cherry red , drop top sports car with 400 horses under the bonnet

we have seen the nightly ads on TV, with Little Miss Lovely draped over it in almost nothing except a diamond choker and impossibly high heels

we have seen the ads in "Financial Review" of it parked outside the most exclusive club in town

we've got a spare 3 million in our hip pocket

what better way to get rid of it than by buying a few dreams?

But can we scratch a wee bit deeper than this?

Come back to my original post to this thread.

Why did Josh Bell take $32 in the subway on one day, and $25,000 the following day when he climbed onto a stage?

What is the difference between a painting that is attributed to Vermeer, and one that is not?

Maybe what you have written is touching on what I'm trying to get at, but I feel it is touching on it as an overlay, not as a part of the foundation.

What is going on in our minds?

Perhaps you may care to think a little more on this question?

[Emanuel]

I started collecting due to a life-long interest in swords. I had no direct connection to them, but when I was six or seven I coveted an uncle's army/hunting knife.
My first swords were the stainless steel repro variety from the local shopping mall. I got my first real sword or dagger when I discovered ebay in 2005, joined this forum and got a keris from Henk, followed by a takouba, a khukri and so on. None of them had any specific story, or provenance or attribution, but I got an interesting feeling when holding them. I had an interesting dream about a keris the night before I received the one from Henk. I had no such feeling from a 10lb "ginuwine Toledo sword" that my sister brought me from a trip to Spain.

Since then I've been adding to the collection whenever I can. I've been snatching up flissa whenever possible even though I wonder "do I really need another?". I think humans are hoarders by nature. We find something we like and we try to accumulate as much of it as possible. Why else collect dozens of the same identical object? We feel good having many versions of the same thing. I find it odd that we don't get tired of them. Don't they get boring and mundane when we have dozens or hundreds of them? Pictures of Spiral's khukri walls and some of the keris collections come to mind.
I do discriminate, however. I only like khukri with the pre-WWI lines and hardly care for the British patterns. I love the British 1796 LC and HC sabres because of their proportions and fine lines, not because collectors say they are desirable. I fell in love with a picture of a flissa before I read about it. I generally go for pieces that look like they've been used once in their lives.

My collection room feels almost like an old church when I step in it and not for any spiritual/religious reason. I get the same feeling of old use and faint traces of what came before. I handle the pieces, examine them and think briefly about their lives before putting them back on the wall. I think that despite the modern ideal of consumerism we crave anchors to the past. We need something that has endured the test of time, perhaps especially when we undergo lots of change. I've moved around a fair bit in my life before settling here in Toronto. Perhaps elder collectors here have seen the quick pace of societal and technological change over the past century and look for something constant and unchanging? Keris may be newly produced, but the keris system is old and not too prone to change.

Would we feel different if tomorrow we found out that all the books on arms and all the fellow collectors here were a huge hoax? That our flissas, tulwars, khukris and keris were made within the past 80 years in a prop factory for 1920s Hollywood?

[Emanuel]

Another thought...

Perhaps we do indeed fetishize our collections' significance in their lives and through them live what we cannot directly achieve. They had a clear purpose and they were very important to their makers, owners, their societies. They did what we cannot, went where we cannot. We harken to that feeling of usefulness and purpose when that seems to be lacking these days. The tool had a strict purpose and its user had an equally well-defined purpose. Use the tool for the specific objective. These days it seems like much of our lives lacks purpose. Go to school, get higher education, get a "respectable" job, get an office, get a house, get a car, get a tv, watch tv garbage, conform to standards, perpetuate the cycle with offspring. Once in a while achieve something relevant to the multitudes at large and be widely remembered.

In counter-point, loads of people care not a damn about old things. They crave change and piles of rusty swords are garbage. I think these people are crazy and dangerous...

Of course there is also obsessive compulsion. Collect paper clips...paper clips are safe...touch object that came into contact with other objects of idolatry and fetishism...

I prefer the thought of collectors as wardens, keepers and caretakers of the world's material culture for collective memory.

[Jussi M.]

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

Jussi, I feel that what you have given us is what I would categorise as "modern marketing theory" (...)

But can we scratch a wee bit deeper than this?

Maybe what you have written is touching on what I'm trying to get at, but I feel it is touching on it as an overlay, not as a part of the foundation. (...)

Perhaps you may care to think a little more on this question?

Greetings Mr. Maisey,

I was not implying to marketing or advertising per se but what lies beneath it. - Yes, advertising tries to exploit the phenomena we are talking about by riding on top of it hoping to catch the wave (and building them from scratch) so to speak but the phenomena we are addressing is born within - not something that can be put forth from outside unless there is a craving already.

We humans want to go further and achieve our goals of which the highest is happiness (self-actualization). We become happy by advancing towards our goals. What ever might be associated with happiness thus becomes a vehicle that could take us towards it. Buying and money per se have absolutely nothing to do with it except that they have become the norm to get them vehicles which one uses to close with what one identifies as the bringer of oneness I. happiness. This is why a fake Vermeer is not OK. If it were one would willingly accept redemption.

Would one willingly choose a fake God on his side?

No. This is why we accept to sacrifice (pay) a lot for the original but become angered if deceived. - Whilst both the original and fake might appear similar in appearance it is only the original which has the power to bring us closer to oneness / happiness.

In my opinion the story per se is therefore not it.

It is the values embedded within and evoked by the story that are it. The story is merely a vehicle to get to the source which paradoxically or not lies within our very own value system and the preconception formed by it. We humans are, by nature, social predators. Thus there is "always" a social element in everything we do whether the act itself be of a social nature or not. An act done in seclusion of, say in ones own study room, has therefore a "social element" in it as it as it is the lack of the social elements that make´s the act (ritual) special for the performer of it. Thus, say for example a collector of kerises may feel genuine oneness I. happiness when he is performing his monthly ritual of oiling his ORIGINAL kerises.

The act (here oiling) thus becomes a physical manifestation - a ritual if you will - of the pursuit of self-actualization I. happiness by coming closer with - choose - and what one deems as "it". It has been said that a "man is the image of God". By closing and advancing what one feels is "true", "original" and "right" one becomes closer to oneness I. being happy by performing them "divine" acts.

What these acts are or what vehicles are used is mere surface level noise. What is important is what values we attach to these acts and vehicles, why and how this happens, how do we "label" new things of either belonging or not belonging (separating) to the same camp with what we deem "worthy" and "good", how do we come up with what is "good" etc?

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

Why did Josh Bell take $32 in the subway on one day, and $25,000 the following day when he climbed onto a stage?

Because both audiences recognized the authenticity and divinity of the performance. The zeros in the physical manifestation of these acknowledgments is irrelevant.

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

What is going on in our minds?

That indeed is a good question.

[A. G. Maisey]

Jussi, I respect the effort and thought has gone into your posts, however, I feel that you might be moving perhaps level or two in advance of the purely personal appreciation of an object, and that is what we are directing our attention to.

What is happening when we encounter, rather than when we acquire, or feel a need to acquire.

The propaganda/marketing/ societally influenced logic can certainly work for the individual who has been exposed to it, but how do we understand the influence of the object itself in the absence of these influences?