These two objects likely originated in the same court workshop or were assembled as a matched set for ceremonial presentation. The silver repoussé work on the axe handle and on the keris hilt shares a common decorative vocabulary of dense foliate arabesques, geometric banding, and floral roundels characteristic of high-quality Malay silversmithing from the Riau-Lingga archipelago or the Malay Peninsula sultanates of Perak, Pahang, or Kelantan.
The kapak (ceremonial axe) head is a broad copper or bronze crescent with a warm reddish-brown surface. Axes of this type functioned as alat kebesaran (regalia) in the Malay sultanate tradition, carried before the ruler as emblems of legitimate sovereignty. The handle is a long cylinder entirely encased in silver repoussé: geometric and triangular motifs near the head, continuous foliate scrollwork on the main body, a domed finial cap. The keris shares this visual language: the hilt is fully encased in silver repoussé with a globular pommel and flaring lower section, the selut (blade collar) continuing the program seamlessly. The blade shows seven or nine luk with visible flowing pamor, and the relatively narrow ganja is consistent with Malay and Sumatran practice.
Within the hilt typology of the collection, this fully encased silver hilt represents one pole of a spectrum running from the purely material (plain hardwood or plain ivory) through the figurally carved (raksasa, dewa) to this extreme of total metalwork coverage.
