Bali keris of unknown origin

[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?

[Jean]

Hello Alan,
The sampir of this kris was replaced by the Dutch seller, it was in sampiran/ bancihan/ jamprahan style originally.
I have no clue about the origin of the pendok as well but it is nicely made.
The blade & hilt are probably from Lombok indeed. The stones on the uwer seem to be low quality rubies, these are quite commonly found with good quality silver uwers.

[A. G. Maisey]

Thank you Jean for this beautiful illustration of the point I was trying to make. It is sometimes difficult to understand why something --- in this case a keris --- varies from what we expect to see, but with this keris that you have presented you have the answers to some of the questions one might ask if this particular keris were to be encountered.

I would like to talk about the component parts of this keris just a little more.

Starting with the atasan of the wrongko.

I use the word "atasan" for two reasons, firstly it was invariably the word that the tukang wrongkos whom I knew used to refer to this part of the wrongko, secondly it is from the word "atas" which is a very common word in BI that everybody can immediately grasp, "atasan" applied to the top cross part of the wrongko is readily understood as the "part above", or the "top part".

Although many keris books will tell us that in Jawa the correct name for this part is "gambar", my experience is that this word, meaning "picture" is rarely used in reference to a wrongko, but is more often used in reference to the carvings of nagas, singo barongs & puthuts in the actual keris itself.

The word "sampir" has the sense of something that is hanging, it occurs in Javanese, Balinese & BI and in each language it has related but slightly different principal understandings. I have never heard "sampir" used in relation to keris scabbards in either Jawa or Bali. However, it does appear to be the correct word to use when we refer to a Malay style of wrongko top.

You have mentioned that this atasan was "--- replaced by the Dutch seller ---". I am unclear if you mean that the Dutch seller carved this atasan himself, or if he gave to somebody else to carve or to have carved.

If he carved it himself it is a remarkable achievement, if it was carved in Indonesia I would need to carefully consider where the carving was done. My first impression when I looked at this atasan was that it was just a whisker too short across and a whisker too fat, a bit like the Bali style wrongkos that come from Madura & East Jawa, and also similar to the Bali style wrongkos that come from the carvers who supply the Jogja market. The material from which it is carved can be understood as tri kancu, really nice tri kancu. This wood is scarce everywhere but it is more likely to be used in Bali or Lombok than in Jawa.

So from my perspective, I see this atasan as a bit of a contradiction:- I am uncertain where this atasan might have been carved. On the other hand, I might just by seeing something that is a distortion artefact caused by the camera or the angle at which the photo was taken.

The above is the reason I used the word "style".

In respect of the pendok, there is probably not much more to say. It is in my opinion not Balinese work. The lis ("collar") is not used on Balinese pendoks, but it is common in Madura, similarly, many Madura pendok use a kepet, which although totally different in form to the buntut on this pendok, do serve the same purpose.I do not want to guess where this pendok was made, but it does not look like either Balinese work or Central Jawa work. If a gun was held to my head I think I'd opt for East Jawa. I am assuming that the material is silver, not mamas.

The keris itself is certainly Balinese style, it might be Lombok origin, but I find it difficult to accept Balinese settlement on Lombok as not being a part of Bali itself. You & I, and I think probably all Western World people, think of the sea separating land as division, the peoples of the Archepelago do not. They think of the sea, & bodies of water in general, as highways. To the Balinese of the Balinese colonial period, the settlements on Lombok were right next door and there was continuous contact between Klungkung and Lombok. Just looking at a keris blade bare of dress, I find it extraordinarily difficult to support a valid opinion on whether that blade originated in either Bali or Lombok.

The uwer is worth close attention.

The colour of those cabochon(?) "stones" on my screens is pink, a light, pretty pink. These stones might be natural stones, or they might be pastes. They might be light pink in colour, or they might be red, and the colour in the hand differs from the colour I can see on my screens.

There are a number of gem stones that are pink, but not all were historically used in Balinese & Javanese ornamentation. The most common pink stones found in older Balinese work are tourmaline, topaz, spinel & ruby, when ruby is found it is usually a star ruby. In Javanese work it is common to refer to all pink and red stones as "mirah" which is a pretty rubbery term and can mean either "ruby" or "cheap" or "red". In Balinese the word "mirah" is 99% of the time understood to mean "ruby".

Now, if indeed these "stones" are red, then that makes this a legitimate colour for use in Balinese society. Red is the colour of Brahma, and as such is appropriate for such use. The other colours that are deemed to be appropriate are black & white.

If indeed these stones are pink, that colour is associated with Mahesora, God of the South East, & Laksmi, the Goddess of wealth. Neither of these two deities seem to have a place in the Balinese Mandala as applied to the Keris Culture of Bali.

I really do appreciate you presenting this keris for our consideration Jean, it has a lot to teach us.

[Jean]

Hello Alan,
Regarding the top part of the scabbard, Neka calls it sampir/ warangka (page 52) and Djelenga calls it angkup (page 288).
I have several uwers from Bali/ Lombok with pink stones (see pics) but I am not sure about the materials.
The "atasan" of my ex-kris was not made by the Dutch seller, it has some age and I shipped the whole kris to Solo for adjusting and treating the blade, polishing the atasan, and fitting the pendok.
Regards