Mahesa/Kebo

[A. G. Maisey]

David, it seems obvious to me that you can no longer hide your true character behind a camera lens. You are clearly descended from a long line of farmers, even though you may not be able to identify one single agriculturalist or herdsman in your known ancestors.

As to the name, I reckon it depends on who you are and where you are. In conversation with any keris literate person whom I know, I would simply call it "kebo":- we've got the thing in front of us, we know what we're talking about, and my keris literate friend could very easily use a different name for it, so just "kebo" would be good enough.

Moving away from that scenario, I'd follow the lead of whoever I was speaking with, in order not to create any disagreement --- something that the Name Game is pretty good at generating.

I'm not going to suggest a name for this keris, because I'd only do what you have already done, I'd look in every reference I could find and list the names I found.

Re the keris fit. If you coat the gonjo with machine oil and put the keris into the scabbard, the oil will stain where it touches, then you take a small, sharp blade and scrape (NOT cut) the stained wood away. After repeating this operation uncountable times you eventually get a flush fit. It does take a lot of time & patience to get it perfect. I recently fitted dress to a Jayasukadgo for a gentleman in the USA, and the final fitting took around as long as all the rest of it put together.

However, this idea of having a perfectly flush fit of the blade to the wrongko is a pretty recent I think. I have seen many older, I mean much older, Javanese & Balinese keris where most of the gonjo projects above the top of the gambar, this is also pretty common with Bugis style keris.

[David]

Thanks Alan. Of course, now that i have been living in rural Nova Scotia for a couple of years the farming in me may be beginning to surface. LOL!
I do understand your reasoning here and obviously we can see that even people consider themselves "authorities" will disagree on this stuff.
I am familiar with the drill on doing the fit. You may not remember, but i got this sheath through you and you walked me through the process back then. I did follow this technique as best i could, but was perhaps too impatient to achieve perfection at the time. As i stated though, i am fine with the fit as is, even if it is not perfect.
What i was hoping you might have an idea about is my question on the origin of this blade. We did discuss this before a long time ago with no firm conclusions, but these are better photos at a later date and perhaps you might have some ideas.

[A. G. Maisey]

I had forgotten that David, but when I looked at the dress it did look like the sort of thing that could have come from me.

Re blade origin, what I look for are indicators, and then it becomes a case of process of elimination. A primary indicator, if present, is the ron dha. With this keris, the rondha is not distinctive enough for me to place it anywhere except "Jawa". The pawakan, the other features, such as kembang kacang don't really point me in any direction. That pretty much leaves me with material, and I'd need to feel this to come to some sort of defensible opinion. If the blade is inclined to lightness, I still feel that its sort of Gresiky --- if it was me who gave it that previously --- but the material really doesn't look like Gresik.

I don't know, maybe just a general sort of "East Jawa" might be OK. I don't like Central Jawa or Jogja. North Coast? I can't see that. Some unknown desa somewhere in Jawa? Maybe, but the level of craftsmanship looks a bit too nice for that.

It is simply not always possible to hang a reasonably definite opinion on the geographic location of origin, or on the period, with a lot of keris related things. Where we have very high level quality, or very definite style, yeah, we can take a crack at it, but with something that is more or less generic it is only guesswork --- or salesmanship.