A Javanese keris blade is folded from iron and nickel-bearing metal, then bathed in warangan — arsenic with citrus juice — which bites the iron nearly black and leaves the nickel silver. The pattern, the pamor, lives inside the metal and appears only under acid.

This system takes the etched blade as its ground. Dark iron everywhere, silver reserved for what matters, wood and worn gold for the fittings. Type is scholarly rather than dramatic: this is the register of a catalogue of forms, where each pattern carries a name, an attributed effect, and a prohibition.