The island of Java and indeed in all of this archipalego nation of Indonesia holds no shortage of wonders and wonderous things. And from the ancient cultures of Majapahit and earlier to the contemporary Islamic Mataram Kingdoms in Central Java and the various cultures that came into this country, Portugese, Dutch, English, Chinese and Middle-Eastern; all these left a mark on the arts and culture of Java, in the architecture, decoration, way-of-life, thought/speech and expression.
Caveat Emptor!
Let the buyer beware!
There has been great interest with vigorous and avid collecting throughout the preceeding decades from both foreign and local collectors and now being in the 21st century and these items not having been remade in their stylistic forms in any greater numbers, would mean that the ratio of genuine objects of really good quality out in the open is shrinking with time and the probability of finding a real treasure item is with mathematical probability - miniscule.
However, commonly manufactured items and venacular items still abound and there is something for everyone, be it ancient padlocks, old bicycles, crystal ware to ethnic items found nowhere else.
And the fakes in relation to the general antique trade and market on Java is somewhat akin to saintly relics available scattered around the Catholic world; if all were the real thing, then all the bits of the cross would be enough to build an ark!
Very often you have the very savvy seller or dealer who tells you marvellous accounts of how an item came into being; or, a very basic to graphic description of a piece, leaving some or much to your own imagination to fill in the spaces. Most of these dealers with the gift of spinning yarns would make best selling fiction authors if more literate and probably be in a more lucrative profession.
Get to know some basics on the item that you are interested in or buying.
The dealer represents the item as a really rare and interesting piece but your gut feeling tells you otherwise - Using your basic senses of sight, touch and commonsense, you should be able to tell whether an item fits into the category or basic description attributed to it, it may be helpful to accustom your eye (and add to your knowledge) to the subtle differences as to manufacture and design from area to area, district to district and varying styles of the same genre. You would appreciate that something like a Javanese Keris for example, would vary in form, make and decoration from Solo to Yogya, the handles for one are different as are the rest of the parts that make up the entire item; the court styles in the central Java would vary distinctly from the country or venacular styles found to the east and north of those centres. Watch out for convenient composites or frankenstein-makes!
Or whether an item such as a wooden decorative piece attributed to the early years of the Mataram courts of Solo and Yogya could necessarily bear machine marks and modern paint finishings to it?
If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. High quality fakes have been known to be "planted" in remote village areas and rural dealers; waiting for their "re-discovery". You should think about whether in all probability could something like that still be extant in-situ.
And I have met and seen excellent craftsmen at work making fakes, from scratch to enhancing the appearance\(hence the value as well!) of ordinary items through embellishment, faking patinas and paint jobs, in most cases creating absolutely convincing pieces that could dazzle the unitiated. However as many of these craftsmen and artists have not had access to a genuine masterpiece for which to copy, they sometimes fall short when logic is applied to the strange appearance of Chinese-style furniture and combination-culture (eg, Chinese influence on a Javanese object) where the Chinese characters do not add up to a meaning or where "pakem", strict ancient standards in the make and proportion of objects is not followed, like the myriad of strange-looking contemporary loro blonyo statutes, manufactured, coloured and often-times processed to look aged but looking nothing like an original, either in make, sophistication or the simple pakem not being followed.
These are works of art in their own right but do not fall under the category of an antiquity or a genuine ethnic object. Good for tourist souvenirs or knick-knacks but not as collectables. Like the mass produced African masks that are made to look like the rare objects collected back in the 1800s by European expeditions, many of these are even produced on Java and Bali for export.
My advice is don't believe the yarns. Evaluate the item "as is"; without placing any unnecessary weight on the input from the seller/dealer; very often I tell these dealers that if their story could be valued and sold on, it would be worth very much more than the item itself. Very often these dealers are out to sucker another victim and offload another item into its final resting place. Most dealers relish at meeting and getting their hands on the types of buyers who have the dough but don't know much about the items and even better, if they could be talked into parting with money for whatever that is represented by the dealer.
From my years mingling in the trade, I formulated the Three "No-s" or "Tiga Tidak":
1. Tidak membeli barang *jelek = No buying of bad items
The Indonesian word jelek could mean bad, poorly or just plainly ugly.
2. Tidak dengan harga konyol = No(t) buying with absurd prices
This must be universally self-explanatory
3. Tidak menjadi *TPA = No(t) ending up as the final dump site
*TPA - tempat pembuangan akhir = final dump site; for if you had a really good item in hand, you would still be able to sell it in the future and not be stuck with it in sour realisation that you were duped.
I had my base in collecting Chinese ceramics and works-of-art and was studying abroad during my formative years, thus having the opportunity to examine objects at both private collections and in museums and even then after I returned to Indonesia and tried my hand at collecting some of the fascinating bits-and-pieces representative of the island culture of Java; I still managed to fall on my nose at the hands of less-than-scrupulous dealers.
They all spun such wondrous yarns that could bring tears to my eyes, or arouse my long-deceased father from his grave! A wondrous and marvellous chain of events or provenance that upon hindsight, could not be proven nor resurrected beyond the verbal accounts of the storyteller.
Knowing what you want
Knowing what you are after helps a great deal in avoiding pitfalls and disappointments down
the line.
If you are a serious collector, as opposed to a home decorator (who just buys items to fill a niche and not for any other knowledge or intrinsic purpose), it is important to learn to build up a quality collection instead of quantity which usually translates to copious loads of clutter.
It could mean the difference in a chance meeting with the rare classical or a broad brush with the venacular.
It could be keris boards, art-deco items, crystal and glass bottles, hanging lamps, wood components of houses and other ethnographical items which make Java so interesting.
The Weird and Wonderful
This brings to mind about some western collectors (they are termed "Bule", a local slang for "white-man") who came in the preceding decades to buy stuff and apart from those who got away with container-loads of assorted stuff paid off at the depredatory foreign exchange rates of the few weeks post the May 1998 disturbances; most simply bought interesting loads of clutter, admittedly there must have been a few rustic gems amongst the quantitative total but nonetheless the majority is, clutter; for the want of a kinder descriptive.
It is mind-boggling for me to try to comprehend the reasons why anyone would buy stuff that is described as museum-quality artifacts by the container-load, ship them off to some foreign country in the west, put them in a shop there (and also claim that they were placed in storage, not offered for sale) and then to ship them again back to Indonesia to sell. And these could not sell in their entirety at a single sitting, requiring multiple sales and many at low to no reserve in order to attract buyers.
The logic doesn't add up here and this shall remain a legend for future generations.
-&-
Although I live in the western part of Java, my interest lies in the central Javanese city of Surakarta where I spent a great deal of time visiting relatives on holiday breaks from school term since the 1980s.
Much of this city and many others on Java and Bali contain a wealth of interesting items and armed with some knowledge and commonsense, a few worthy gems could still be unearthed.
Of course, all of us would like to aspire to collect a range of museum-quality and rare objects which could double-up as a retirement nest-egg; but this admittedly will take much experience, good fortune and basal knowledge of where to look, what to look out for and how to execute the acquisition fortuitously.
Know the pit-falls and do some research as fakes abound. There is a two-fold pit, one if erred only on price, which would just mean that the item is good but overpriced; and the other is more of a disaster, where you paid good money for duds.
Happy hunting!
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