Tracing Patterns of Textiles in Ancient Java (8th–15th century) (original) (raw)
Related papers
Eur ASEAA 14 Dublin, 2020
The Mahāyāna Buddhist goddess Prajñāpāramitā was widely patronized in East Java in the thirteenth century as evidenced by the number of surviving images. This paper addresses the stylistic similarities between two stone sculptures of Prajñāpāramitā, one originating from Caṇḍi Singosari in East Java, now in the Museum Nasional Indonesia in Jakarta, and the other from the Muarajambi temple complex in central Sumatra, now in the site museum. Prima facie these two images suggest a close political, religious and artistic connection between Singhasāri and Muarajambi. Both figures are dressed in a cloth carved in bas relief with intricate repeated roundels, characteristic of a brocaded luxury cloth imported from China, but the roundels contain dissimilar designs and their carving differs markedly. Unfortunately, the lack of surviving inscriptions or other records has rendered problematic any research into their relationship. Consequently, it is only the sculptures themselves which remain as the primary source attesting to any connection.
[Review article:] Textiles of Indonesia: The Thomas Murray Collection
Arts of Asia 54(2):136-143 (Spring 2024), 2024
This is an 8-page book review article, published in the journal "Arts of Asia" vol. 54 no. 2, pp. 136-143 (Spring 2024), about the book "Textiles of Indonesia: The Thomas Murray Collection." The print or digital issue of this magazine can be obtained from: https://artsofasia.com/product/spring-2024-magazine/?mc\_cid=dbebcee253&mc\_eid=045a453e90 "Textiles of Indonesia: The Thomas Murray Collection" is a remarkable, multi-authored, multifaceted, large and sumptuously illustrated 556-page book. Its grandness of presentation reflects the fact that textiles are a pre-eminent and especially iconic form of Indonesian art, whose cultural importance has often been compared to painting in Western art. Indonesia’s highly diverse and localized ethno-linguistic identities and social statuses are also often reflected in distinctive textile forms. The collection presented here reflects Thomas Murray’s thoughtful and well-informed connoisseurship applied during over forty years of collecting – a rich and extensive survey of the textile arts of the “Outer Islands” (the vast Indonesian archipelago beyond Java and Bali) of Indonesia, understood as extending to all of Borneo and Timor, independent of national boundaries on those islands. For this multi-authored work, no general editor’s name is given though a colophon on the last page lists three publisher’s editors, who surely did yeoman’s service bringing this vast work together. The title page lists fourteen authors (including Murray himself, who wrote the Introduction and one chapter on Iban sungkit textiles of Borneo). These authors, some of whom wrote several of the book’s twenty-four chapters, have produced an easily flowing and visually compelling narrative, consisting of five introductory chapters providing different overviews of the collection; fifteen regional studies grouped into nine Indonesian regions from west to east that include Batak (1), Lampung (2, 3), Borneo (4), Sulawesi (5), Lombok (6), Flores and Lembata (7, 8), Sumba (9-15), Timor (16), and “The Eastern Islands” (17); and four important analytical chapters presented as Appendices (on beadwork, how to study and interpret motifs, new analyses of metallic threads in textiles, and the radiocarbon dating of textiles in the Murray collection).
Textiles in Old-Sundanese Texts
Archipel, 2019
This article discusses Sundanese textiles in the pre-Islamic period, as they are depicted in Old-Sundanese texts. Precolonial sources, especially from the Sundanese-speaking region, will be studied in terms of their connection to textiles (in particular woven textiles), including features to do with the relevant activities, instruments, colours, motifs and the supernatural aspects behind the particularly female occupation of weaving. Because the formulaic properties of Old-Sundanese texts are often associated with archaic expressions found in carita pantun, especially in illustrations of weaving, such sources of oral tradition will also be used, in order to obtain a clearer picture of weaving traditions in Sunda during the pre-Islamic period.
7th ASEAN Traditional Textile Symposium, 2019
This paper uses ethnographic and archival data to provide an overview of some of the ways in which connections have been formed through textile trade between India and Indonesia over the past centuries and well into the present. The example of patola double-ikat, woven textiles from Gujarat, India, will illustrate how trade textiles have influenced some Indonesian weaving traditions. Based on examples of textiles on the Indonesian islands of Bali, Flores, and Java, Indonesia, this paper will describe how iconic patola patterns have been translated and incorporated into local socio-cultural and ritualistic frameworks through innovative production and usage. As such, this paper makes a case for studying textiles as products and processes of socio-cultural change transmitted by global flows of materials and aesthetics.
Journal of World Buddhist Cultures, 2018
In contrast to the author’s last paper published in the previous volume of JWBC which introduced the visual syntax of the Buddhist mural paintings of the ancient Kucha Kingdom, this paper rather focuses on another aspect of these mural paintings as the visual witness of the particular historical, socio-cultural conditions of the region. The specific type of decorative pattern on the monks’ robes depicted in the narrative paintings of a particular style in Kucha is worth special attention. This paper consists of two main sections. The first section charts the geographical and chronological distribution of the depiction of textiles bearing this specific type of decorative pattern. They appear intensively in the Buddhist art in oasis towns from Gansu Province in the east to Bamiyan in the west, which are dated approximately from the middle of the fifth century to the middle of the six century. The second section analyzes the historical, social and ritual background of these depictions. The archaeological find of the textile fragment excavated from the Boma grave and the textual evidence found in the Turfan manuscripts leads to the supposition that these textiles are most probably portrayal of the actual textiles called “Kucha Silk (Qiuci-Jin)” at that time. The reason why textiles with such an outstanding geometric pattern could be accepted in the monastic environment may have to do with the local interpretation of the prescription in the Vinaya that the appropriate robes of monks should look like “the field of Magadha”. The unusually detailed depictions of the monks’ robes made of local textiles in the narrative paintings may have been intended to commemorate and guarantee of the merit of laymen, who donated these valuable textiles to the monastery at particular ritual occasions like kaṭhina.