Bali keris of unknown origin

[Marcokeris]

Just to stay on the topic of discussion I post a photo of two wooden Madura hilts made for Bali market

[A. G. Maisey]

But they can produce fine quality hilts in Madura too Marco. There is a carver lives away from Sumenep, I forget the name of the place, "Bhu---" something or other, and his work is very good indeed.

Actually, the best Balinese carvers have priced themselves out of the market, and I'm not talking just keris hilts, I'm talking the entire swath of Balinese carving.

The recognised Grand Master of Balinese hilts --- I will not mention his name --- is now so expensive that he really only needs to sell one hilt a year to have a comfortable lifestyle.

His son --- or maybe its his son-in-law, I'm not clear on this --- has jacked up his prices into the realm of major art works too. Not as expensive as the Old Man, but too expensive for me.

In Solo the wood carving industry is centered on the village of Serinan, carvers from Jepara on the north coast came there years ago and settled when the competition in Jepara became too tough. All that very high quality mahogany & teak furniture that we see in expensive shops all across the world mostly comes from Serinan, and a niche market in Serinan is the making of fine Balinese style carvings, produced at a fraction of the cost that the Balinese carvers ask.

When I say "Serinan" I'm not talking just about that village, I'm referring to all the carvers in the broader Solo area who are associated with the Serinan trade.

I used to buy from a dealer in Badung, he passed about ten years ago, I dealt with him for around 35 years. He used to get very angry with both the local carvers for increasing their prices, and with the people who had generated the stuff that was produced in other places in Bali style. To his way of thinking both these groups of people were undermining the local economy in Bali.

[Paul B.]

The complete dress seems to be made for a Sumatran kris (with this buntut). It is a disrespectful sarong.

[A. G. Maisey]

Just the pendok Paul, the atasan or gambar is older Bali, the hilt is a bit of a mix of two different genuinely Balinese themes, the cup upon which the hilt sits is a sort invention, as is the treatment of the covering for the gandar.

It is what we might call a montage, a keris composed of various unrelated pieces.

The disrespect I consider to be associated with the hilt.

This sort of thing is more common than we might wish, it usually occurs when an uneducated dealer gets hold of something genuine that he wants to extract the max dollar for, and it then gets sold to a keen collector who is still learning the ropes.

I was bitten a few times a long time ago, and I'd bet most of us were.

[A. G. Maisey]

Afterthought

I just re-read this comment, & it sounds harsh, it is not intended to be.

This is a nice keris, the dress is pretty much less than nice, but it can be easily improved.

It is the keris itself that is important, this situation might be likened to a true gentleman who is momentarily down on his luck and has been forced to dress in whatever he could pick up from a Salvation Army table.

[Jean]

See a similar style of silver pendok with a flat buntut for a Bali/ Lombok kris and which has some age.

[A. G. Maisey]

Jean, the keris is Balinese or Balinese style, the atasan is Balinese style, the pendok is not Balinese, and the hilt is more likely to be Lombok than Bali.

There is perhaps a possibility that this keris was put together in Lombok, but my personal opinion is that it is much more likely to have been put together in Surabaya.

I find it very difficult to accept the embossing work on that pendok as being from a Balinese hand.

I did not nominate a particular person in my earlier post without a basis for so doing.

Bear this in mind Jean:- a buntut is added to a pendok or a gandar for a functional reason, it is not placed there for ornamentation. The reason for its existence is prevent dislodging the scabbard when the keris is drawn, and Balinese keris have no need for that buntut because they are not worn in a way where a buntut would serve any functional purpose.

However, many collectors do find the existence of a buntut to be very cool indeed, so dealers who understand the collector market have in the past sometimes added a buntut to a scabbard in order to make a keris more attractive to a buyer.

Over a long time I have known a lot of Indonesian dealers personally, and other dealers through trade and correspondence. You might find this a little bit surprising, but prior to the birth of the internet and the rapid spread of keris knowledge & belief through that medium, most dealers whom I encountered knew precious little about the keris and keris-like objects they were dealing in. They understood their buyers very well, and they understood the market place, but their knowledge of the keris was not particularly wonderful.

On a similar note, are those stones or pastes in the uwer pink? Do you think that this uwer would be fitted to a keris for wear and/or use by a Balinese man? Can we name the colours that are permissible for the stones in an uwer intended for use in traditional Balinese society?