Textiles of Southeast Asia. Robyn Maxwell
Philippines, Seram, central Sulawesi and by the various Dayak groups of Borneo, appears to draw upon similar ancient designs and techniques. The framing border commonly found on Lake Sentani painted bark-cloth fabrics is an unusual decorative device. The manner in which figures often protrude from the linear frame or even stand outside looking in indicates the strikingly free design format permitted by painting on bark-cloth. While these cloths are worn by women on festive occasions, they are also hung over a young woman's grave (Kooijman, 1959: 20). Further east in Polynesia, the similar design structure of some painted bark-cloths to that of many Indonesian woven cloths led the textile historian, Alfred Bühler, to suggest the possibility of a lost weaving art in that Pacific region (1969: 228). It seems more likely that the ancient design elements of both the Pacific and Southeast Asia, particularly of the Austronesian peoples within the region, have been continually developed and transformed, using various materials and decorative techniques. Consequently, similar patterns have often emerged in both regions.
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Bark-cloth beaters are easily transportable and many of the groups who used bark-cloth were shifting cultivators and hunters. However, many are now settled agriculturalists and alternatives to bark-cloth, such as various types of thread and cloth, are widely available. As a result, the use of bark-cloth has almost disappeared except for isolated pockets of insular Southeast Asia.10 However, in some cultures where bark-cloth has long been replaced by woven fabrics for everyday and festive wear, bark-cloth garments, as well as leaf cloaks and skirts, still hold ritual significance and appear to offer the necessary symbolic protection at funerals and other such times of spiritual disorientation. For example, in southern Borneo bark-cloth is donned in rites associated with death, including the simulated death that takes place during ritual tattooing and the ritual rebirth of circumcision ceremonies. In the same region, a widow or widower wears clothing made of bark-cloth until the mortuary feast to ensure her or his own continued 'existence' after the funeral (Scharer, 1963: 89-90). A bark-cloth fabric is included amongst the full set of four death cloths required for an Ifugao of importance, though these are not often worn in Luzon today (Roces, 1985: fn.6).
A photograph by Fay Cooper-Cole, taken in 1907-08, of a group of Batak people dressed for a ceremony on Palawan, in the Philippines. All participants are wearing bark-cloth wraps, loincloths and head-dresses, many of which exhibit hand-painted designs.
Bark-cloth continues to be made to the present day in the northern regions of central Sulawesi and is used for delicate ceremonial garments and sturdy everyday apparel including sleeping covers, rectangular headcloths for men, tunics and huge cylindrical skirts for women. A range of bark-beating implements is shown against a cloth of fine white bark (fuya or nunu) produced by an ancient felting technique. The surfaces of the stone head of the pébamba or iké are of different grades for the early and middle stages of the bark-pounding process. The wooden mallet that is applied to finish the finest cloth is also known as an iké.
baju sungkit man's jacket Tebidah Dayak people, Sintang district, west Kalimantan, Indonesia bark-cloth, cotton, natural dyes embroidery 34.5 x 45.0 ern Rijksrnuseurn voor Volkenkunde, Leiden 781-59
This nineteenth-century bark-cloth jacket displays decoration in the form of stitched reinforcement, one of the earliest forms of embroidery in the Southeast Asian region. The hooked rhornb designs, in white thread, contrast with the brown bark-cloth base. The garment has woven insets at each side and red and blue cotton binding. In other parts of Kalimantan, thick, soft bark-cloth jackets are patterned with painted or stencilled designs (Wassing-Visser, 1983: 12, 84; Gittinger, 1979c: 224).
Two young women wearing layered bark-cloth skirts (nunu) till the rice fields near Kulawi, central Sulawesi.
saboiboi (?) woman's skirtcloth Lake Sentani region, Irian Jaya, Indonesia bark-cloth, ochres painting 127.0 x 57.0 ern Australian National Gallery 1985.1870
The framed asymmetry of this Lake Sentani painted bark-cloth contrasts with the bold repeated designs on other Melanesian bark-cloth. Cloths of these dimensions are worn by women as festive skirts, and on the death of a young woman, bark-cloths are also hung by the grave. This particular cloth, with ochre-brown and black designs on a natural ground, was part of a collection of ethnographic art belonging to and inspiring the European artist Max Ernst. It was probably brought to Paris in the early 1930s.
szga man's headcloth To Bada people, Bada district, central Sulawesi, Indonesia bark-cloth, pigments painting 92.0 x 91.0 cm Australian National Gallery 1982.2296
Studies of Toraja bark-cloth iconography (Kaudern, 1944; Kooijman, 1963; Adriani and Kruyt, 1912; Greub, 1988) suggest that the central motif on this black, white and luminous-pink headcloth of paper-thin, felted bark-cloth represents either the sirih leaves used in the ancient custom of betel-nut chewing or the ears of the water buffalo. However, buffalo-head patterns (petonu or petondu) can be clearly identified in each corner of the cloth. Other motifs on this early twentieth-century bark-cloth may represent the sun or valuable beads.
(detail) baro (?) loincloth Halmahera, Indonesia bark-cloth, pigments, shells painting, drawing, appliqué Museum voor Land- en Volkenkunde, Rotterdam 6814
Meticulous black and white pigment-painted line drawings decorate the belts, loincloths and head-dresses of Seram and the Halmaheras. In this late nineteenth-century example of two ends of a loincloth from Halmahera, the basic fabric is fine, cream-coloured bark-cloth, stained with yellow and brown. The remnants of a shell appliqué trim are still evident.
poté widow's hood Sa'dan Toraja people, central Sulawesi, Indonesia cotton, natural dyes tablet weaving, macramé, tapestry weave 110.0 x 92.0 cm Australian National Gallery 1983.3685
This is an unusual tablet- and tapestry-woven fabric, folded and joined along one side to form a hood. It seems to date from around 1900. Like most Sa'dan Toraja funeral garments, after weaving it has been dyed black, apparently with crushed Homolanthus populneas leaves and mud. Articles of clothing of the deceased are ceremonially blackened with leaves and mud, and it seems that the hoods worn by Sa'dan Toraja widows were also coloured in this way (Solyom and Solyom, 1985: 4 7; Nooy-Palm, 1975: 66). Toraja men also wear poté mourning cloths but of a different type. Elsewhere in Southeast Asia, bark-cloth appears to have been retained as widows' garb, and mourning hoods made from bark-cloth are recorded among certain Dayak peoples of Borneo.
The Dusun and Tempasuk of Sabah wear cowl-like hoods for both work and ceremonial occasions, sometimes with bead or shell bands along the edges. Although comparatively rare, these various examples of shaped hoods may have developed from the widespread Southeast Asian practice of covering the head with an open or folded textile during funerary and other life-cycle rites.
pio uki' ceremonial loincloth; banner Kalumpang or Sa'dan Toraja people, central Sulawesi, Indonesia handspun cotton, natural dyes supplementary weft weave 51 7.0 x 51.0 cm Australian National Gallery 1981.1127
This early twentieth-century ceremonial hanging follows the older format for men's loincloths (pio or piu), with an undecorated white centre for wrapping around the body and intricately worked woven panels which fall in front and behind the wearer. In the twentieth century, the pio have also functioned as ceremonial banners, known as tombi, which are apparently viewed as talismans