Textiles of Southeast Asia - Robyn Maxwell

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1-141

      The value of old records of textiles varies considerably. An early written description is often totally inadequate to determine the visual appearance of a cloth or costume, and old drawings, lithographs and photographs add an important pictorial dimension. However, as these two nineteenth-century lithographs show, the information they convey can also become distorted. Van Oort captures accurately the fabric worn by the Savunese 'champion', easily recognizable as a higi huri worapi (a man's wrap for members of the Hubi Ae, the Greater Blossom moiety) similar to a very early nineteenth-century museum example from the original F. von Siebold collection of the Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde, Leiden. This is one of the earliest Indonesian textiles in any European public collection. However, the later adaptation of van Oort's work by van Pers, published in 1855, completely distorts the information by adding slight but significant variations to the colour and detail of the costume, and by attributing the ethnic origins of the person to Borneo. This lithograph is in sharp contrast to the wonderful impressions of nineteenth-century life in Java by van Pers which appear in the same volume.

      APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF SOUTHEAST ASIAN TEXTILES

      3,4,5

      This book aims to bring some order and meaning to the rich but apparently confusing field of Southeast Asian textiles. This problem has bedevilled researchers since the European colonial era. During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, as part of the study of 'native' arts and crafts, a number of ethnologists began to record the textile arts of various parts of Southeast Asia. An extensive and valuable literature on Indonesian textiles, in particular, dates from this period, and includes many important works of Dutch scholarship written earlier this century. J.A. Loeber (1903; 1913; 1914; 1916; 1926) produced a number of studies on various aspects of Indonesian decorative arts, including several on or related to textiles. Between 1912 and 1927 J.E. jasper and M. Pirngadie produced a series of volumes which set out to describe in great detail the native crafts of the Dutch East Indies, including two volumes documenting textile types and techniques (1912b; 1916). At around the same time, G.P. Rouffaer and H.H. Juynboll completed an important and detailed study of Indonesian batik (1914). During the 1930s and 1940s, a trickle of articles on the subject appeared in both ethnological and popular journals. This study was considerably enriched by the work of the Swiss textile scholar Alfred Buhler who continued to make important contributions to the wider field of ethnographic textiles until his death in 1981.1

      Since the Second World War, the study of Indonesian textiles has expanded on various fronts. Apart from an important interpretative work drawing upon museum textile collections in the Netherlands Gager Gerlings, 1952), there has been a number of comprehensive studies of the textiles of specific ethnic groups. Among the first of these, most of which have been based in anthropology or art history, were M.J. Adams's monograph (1969) and numerous articles on Sumbanese textiles, and M.S. Gittinger's analysis of south Sumatran ship cloths (1972). An impressive number of exhibition catalogues have also appeared, the most notable being M.S. Gittinger's Splendid Symbols (1979c), which combines a valuable synthesis of the scholarship on the subject with many photographs of outstanding examples.

      Despite the recent increase in important studies and journal articles, the textiles of many ethnic groups in Indonesia still remain substantially unrecorded, and the published material on the textile arts from elsewhere in Southeast Asia remains remarkably thin.2 Moreover, Indonesian textiles have been studied largely in isolation from the material cultures of neighbouring countries,3 despite the fact that many historians, linguists and other social scientists have long since recognized the benefits of regarding the whole of Southeast. Asia as a coherent and integrated field of study.4 This study, however, addresses the wider region of Southeast Asia. The boundaries of Southeast Asian countries have been largely determined by political forces operating over relatively recent times. Such political units conform only roughly to ethnic boundaries;5 the wider cultural parameters of the region or its shared historical experiences of the past several thousand years are therefore obscured.

      10,11

      A wider perspective has distinct advantages. It enables us to deal with the problems of textile-producing cultures now divided by national borders. Common historical experiences that have influenced textile arts across the entire region can be examined, and many useful comparisons can be made within and between ethnic groups that otherwise would be impossible. While this book is generously illustrated with material from Indonesia, indicating the extraordinary richness of its textile traditions, fine examples of fabrics from Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Laos and other parts of mainland Southeast Asia have been included.

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       8,9

      Many studies of Southeast Asian textiles have focused on the geographic or ethnic divisions within the region,6 while others have concentrated upon a descriptive account ordered according to decorative techniques.7 Both of these aspects form an important part of the material of this study. However, instead of concentrating on the differences implicit within Southeast Asian textiles - from either a technical or an ethnic perspective - I have searched for the connections and the meanings that lie within this diversity.8 Southeast Asia's quest for design and its receptiveness to certain splendid, decorative ideas from outside the region are seen in the creative transformations in local and foreign designs, material and decorative techniques. The book, therefore, is not arranged geographically or by ethno-linguistic group. However, a checklist of the textiles in the book according to ethnic and geographic origin appears in the index. The juxtaposition of cloths of different sources, techniques and functions is intended to illuminate certain shared features as well as the uniqueness of particular responses to common influences.

      kamben cerek breastcloth Balinese people, east Bali, Indonesia handspun cotton, natural dyes tapestry weave 220.0 x 53.0 cm Australian National Gallery 1984.3173

      kandit waist-sash; ceremonial hanging Tausug people, Sulu archipelago, Philippines silk, dyes tapestry weave 357.0 x 36.5 cm Australian National Gallery 1984.1223

      Two similar designs appear on early twentieth-century tapestry weave textiles from Hindu Bali in Indonesia and the Islamic Tausug people of the southern Philippines. Both are worked in a geometric tapestry weave, known by the Tausug as siyabit. The open windows of the Balinese tapestry weave appear to have been achieved by a combination of carefully arranged groups of warp threads and the insertion, at intervals in the weft, of palm-leaf slivers that were removed on completion of the textile. Despite the contrast between the sombre green, red, yellow and natural brown handspun Balinese cotton and the luminuous pink, blue, orange and purple of the Tausug silk, both fabrics contain comparable interpretations of popular Southeast Asian diamond grid and zigzag patterns.

      Outside pressures and indigenous responses are familiar foci for historians of Southeast Asia. The region is strategically situated at an important international crossroad between major global centres of population. Over many centuries it has been a destination for a constant stream of visitors from both neighbouring and distant foreign lands. These have included explorers and adventurers, foreign envoys, and the soldiers and sailors who accompanied them. Some merely passed through Southeast Asia while others came to control new territories for their rulers. Petty traders and the agents of large and powerful enterprises were lured to Southeast Asia by the possibilities of new markets and the quest for commodities. Among the newcomers were many who professed religious beliefs foreign to Southeast Asians - and were keen to proselytise. There were also those who, driven from their homeland by poverty or persecution, sought a land of hope and opportunity. Some were only transient visitors while others stayed longer. Many newcomers, however, never returned to their original homeland, settling permanently in Southeast Asia. Most have left some imprint on the cultures of the region.

      (detail) kumo hanging; ceremonial gift T'boli people, Mindanao, Philippines abaca fibre, natural dyes warp ikat 40.0 x 864.0 cm Australian National Gallery 1989.397

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