View Single Post
Old 30th March 2013, 02:49 AM   #14
A. G. Maisey
Member
 
Join Date: May 2006
Posts: 6,675
Default

Rick, last year I had the opportunity to handle a lot of very old keris that are located in European museums, keris that entered Europe before 1700 in most cases and in a few cases before 1600.

If I had not known the provenance of these keris my opinion would have been that I was handling keris from no earlier than about 1850, probably much later.

What happens with keris that have been located in their native environment for an extended period of time is that repeated cycles of cleaning followed by lengthy neglect results in a large part of the body of the blade being eroded. This erosion also occurs between the blade base and the gonjo, and thus we get a gap, even a light knock can push an old gonjo out of place.

In blades that have been restored in Central Jawa over the last 40 or so years, many m'ranggi have used epoxy resin, or a mix of epoxy resin and iron filings to fill the gap between the blade and the gonjo, thus providing a degree of protection to this area.
A. G. Maisey is offline   Reply With Quote