Interpreting textiles as a medium of communication: cloth and community in Malay Sumatra (original) (raw)
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7th ASEAN Traditional Textile Symposium, 2019
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The Classification of Indonesian Textiles
2003
This author focuses on Indonesian textiles with ethnic-group characteristics and various material attributes. Examinations were conducted, which then resulted in 'the classification system'. His classification system provides the implications for structural (anatomical), materials and technical studies. More than 2000 textile objects in the custody of Museum Nasional of Indonesia were examined by various analytical methods. This paper discusses identification, naming and systematical classification for 'weaving/ non-weaving and coloration techniques.'
Review of Peter ten Hoopen's Ikat Textiles of the Indonesian Archipelago
Two published reviews (Danerek & Danerek 2019; Buckley 2020) of the book Ikat Textiles of the Indonesian Archipelago by Peter ten Hoopen (2018) failed to adequately address a number of serious problems with this publication. The current review, co-authored by a group of five specialists in Indonesian textiles whose careers in the field span decades, focuses first on the issue of ten Hoopen's shortage of appropriate scholarly citations. The review further considers his overstated belief that "nearly every motif stands for something" (2018:66) and his inclusion of many other personal musings unsubstantiated by adequate documentation. Ethical issues are examined, particularly with regard to the museum practice of hosting exhibitions based on single privately-held collections and to the publication of pseudo-scholarly catalogs authored by collectors about their own collections. A series of seven appendixes (including contributions by two additional scholars) is intended to counter damage to the existing body of literature potentially caused by the future proliferation of numerous errors found in the book.
Naming and Meaning:Ritual Textiles of the Iban of Sarawak
1996
In conjunction with the exhibition ofIban ritual textiles I curated at the Fowler Museum of Cultural History in Los Angeles in 1996, I gave a number oflectures based on my field research. The present paper will address some of the questions that were raised by the audience in Los Angeles. All these question are characteristic of the manner in which members of a Western, literate society tend to approach Iban cloth patterns. This paper is divided into several parts. I begin with a brief background on the Iban people and on the ritual and social function of Iban textiles. This is followed by a condensed account of the two main categories of pattern names used by Iban weavers. The last part is devoted to common Western preconceptions regarding Iban cloth patterns; why we have them, and why we are so reluctant to let them go. The Iban The Iban number about 500.000, the majority of whom live in the Malaysian state of Sarawak, in northwestern Borneo. While today many Iban live in Kuching, the capital, or in other urban centres, most continue to reside in longhouses, cultivating hill rice, the staple. Iban society is egalitarian without any form of hereditary leadership or rank. Status differentiation is based on personal achievement. Formerly, the main means of achievement for men was headhunting, and for women, the weaving of textiles.
International Journal of Multicultural and Multireligious Understanding
This paper examines the tappan and pelepai woven fabric, a kind of woven cloth that shows the social status and position of a person in an ethnic group, as well as the preservation of the woven fabric in the Lampung Sanggi Unggak Museum which is now almost extinct. In fact, tappan woven fabric is an important symbol of identity for indigenous people of Lampung. Its extraordinary beauty is almost unrecognizable.The research method used is ethnography, by conducting in-depth interviews and engaging observations. The results of the study show that the tappan cloth was not known by the people of Lampung in general.However, one of the pioneers of local cultural preservation in the village of Sanggi Unggak Tanggamus, built a museum that collects various kinds of traditional objects, one of which is tappan cloth. The effort to preserve local culture is a form of concern of traditional leaders for extinction of Lampung culture, one of which is tappan cloth. The symbolic meaning becomes shif...