Catalogue of my collection

[BluErf]

Originally Posted by nechesh

Well, the repro is a little rough on some of these images, but they all appear to be beautiful hilts. I might have to get the Jensen book and brush up on my Dutch. It looks fairly obvious that that lovely Shiva hilt doesn't belong on that first keris, doesn't it?
Anyway, i think you might be right, that the original terminology for these hilts may well have been lost. To me the last of them looks like it could be a stylized raksasa, but i wouldn't bet the farm on the other two. The first of them (the abstract hilts) almost looks more like a hanuman to me. I would not be at all surprised if more than one type of figurative form was cloaked in this type of vegetal abstraction. Wish we had better images.

That's what happens when you take a picture of an old picture printed in a book.

I'm not too sure about the lovely Shiva hilt not belonging to the 1st keris. The ivory could have shrunk/warped such that it can't sit down properly on the peksi anymore, and the mendak has probably gone missing, or it could even be the curator not wanting to push the hilt all the way down for fear of putting too much pressure to the hilt; I don't know. I just think that the blade is probably one of the most beautiful and strong-looking Javanese blades ever published. The hilt deserves the blade and vice versa.

How did you come to the conclusion that the 1st one is hanuman?

[nechesh]

Your right, that first one is a VERY nice blade. But aside fron the fit doesn't it appear a bit too small for this robust blade? Just a thought.
On the first abstract i just thought that the head looks very much like a monkey. Maybe it's just me.