Keris (Java Knife)

To preserve life, actually, people would need some tools to help them to improve their standard of living. The initial development of the aiding tools started with the development of cutting instruments that functioned as crusher, cutter, polisher of other tools needed. It is an improvement of culture and civilization in a small group of a colony. Considering simple forms and limited utility, people started to create cutting instruments from sharp and pointed stones. It is marked by the cultural discoveries from the stone age.

The increasing demand and human intelligence, and further recognition of science and technology in human’s life had caused the birth of the Bronze age. Bronze art is an art of mixing mineral substances that are discovered by people apart from the discovery of stone material. On the time when bronze was first discovered and still raw, human tried hard to mix it with other substances that they recently found such as silver and tin so that it could be useful for them.

In accordance to the spiritual development in the beliefs of Animism and dynamism at that time, such kinds of material discoveries were mostly used as ritual instruments. Some of the ritual instrument are also created in forms of weapon to protect themselves. These forms can be seen on the temples relief from Wangsa Sanjaya, Cailendra, Iqana, usually these various forms were held by the Gods as the instruments of judgment.

Since the forms of weapon from bronze were used to represent the power of the Gods, Human has began to search and find metals. It was called the metal age. When metals was discovered , human improved themselves on metal structure and ornaments in the art of processing metal. So close and dependable were human to metal, that the development of metal art grew rapidly from the art of metal mixing, the art of metal molding to the art of metal folding. From the art of metal folding, born a great culture which is considered as the valuable heirloom (Keris) of Indonesian people. This advanced civilization also exists in other countries such as China which is well known for its art of molding metal, Japanese which is an expert in mixing metal, with The Samurai as one of its great metal work, Romans which is famous for its art of processing metal, with the iron mail as one of its metal work.