Textiles of Southeast Asia. Robyn Maxwell
explanation of many of these terms would have required a lengthy appendix so only a basic glossary of the most important has been included. However, interested readers are referred to some of the many works listed in the bibliography dealing with the techniques and processes of Southeast Asian textiles. An exhaustive general treatment of this subject can be found in Emery's comprehensive study, The Primary Structure of Fabrics (1980).
The metric measurements given for each textile in accompanying captions include any fringes where these are a part of the fabric structure. Most of the photographs of textiles are from the collection of the Australian National Gallery and although ethnographic completeness has neither been possible nor been attempted, these examples have been supplemented with material drawn from the collections of other institutions and from photographs taken throughout Southeast Asia. The name of the relevant institution and the record or accession number is provided for each museum textile illustrated.
In west Kalimantan, Indonesia, two Maloh women in festive dress combine their own locally made beaded skirts (kain lekok) with warp ikat and tapestry weave jackets made by their lban neighbours and gold thread brocade shouldercloths from one of the Malay groups of coastal Borneo, probably Sambas.
Detail of Plate 132
Chapter 2
THE FOUNDATIONS
The ancestors of today's Southeast Asian textile artisans have lived in the region for thousands of years. Gradual prehistoric migrations brought peoples from Taiwan and southern China into the region (and, in the case of the Austronesian speakers, out into the Pacific) where they merged with or subsumed earlier populations. The estimated time span of these eras, based on archaeological evidence, varies considerably across the Southeast Asian region. The prehistorian Bellwood points out that 'the Neolithic period begins at different times in different areas of Southeast Asia, but it is generally superseded by bronze-using cultures soon after 1000 BC, and perhaps by as early as 3500 BC in Thailand' (1979: 153).1 The early settlers' languages- Prato-Austronesian, Austro-Asiatic and Thai-Kadai-formed the basis of those of present-day Southeast Asia. From the period of these migrations the cultural foundations were established for many Southeast Asian customs and techniques that are still evident today.
Original cultural traits included a belief in ancestors and spirits, shamanism, omens and magic, extended burial rites, head-hunting and tattooing, the domestication of certain animals, early forms of agriculture and boat-building. No centralized class system seems to have existed: status and authority were based largely on family descent groups in localized districts (Bellwood, 1979; 1985). Aspects of early Southeast Asian life are still reflected in the fabrics of the region, in their motifs and the ways in which they are used.2
Throughout the Late Neolithic and Metal Ages, objects of utility and ritual in the region were decorated in increasingly elaborate styles. Prehistoric burial sites across the region provide sufficient evidence of artifacts, tools, techniques and designs to allow speculation on the earliest forms of fabric and decoration (Bellwood, 1979: Chapters 7 and 8). The crafts of bark-cloth making and weaving were probably well developed before the ancestral migrations occurred.3 Significantly, many of the patterns and motifs that form the striking ornamentation found on prehistoric pottery and metal work are also found in the textile art of the region. For example, the spirals of the 3000-year-old Ban Chiang pots are still recognizable on the regional weavings of Thailand.4 While archaeologists generally end this prehistoric period at the time of Christ when the region became subject to the growing influences of India and China, some of the textile materials and techniques used during the prehistoric period have survived in the region into recent times.
LEAVES, BARK AND FIBRES: THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE EARLIEST FABRICS
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Unprocessed leaves and plant fibres have long been used to make clothing, and simple garments from these materials have been worn by isolated Southeast Asian groups into the twentieth century. The similarity of many leaf and fibre skirts across the region indicates that the materials have largely determined the shape and structure of these clothes. Their use in remote areas, from Burma to New Guinea, but especially on the islands of Enggano and Mentawai off the west coast of Sumatra, on Luzon, Palawan and Mindanao in the Philippines, and among the Sakai of peninsular Malaysia, suggests that this type of clothing was worn in Neolithic times. It was probably the apparel of the early inhabitants of the region who were displaced and absorbed by more technologically advanced prehistoric immigrants.
In this century, in many cultures where other clothing materials are now available, leaves and fibres are still used as ritual garb. Examples of such use include the personification of the evil spirit encased in fibre on the island of Buru in Indonesia (Gittinger, 1979c: 50, Fig.20), the masked shamans of Borneo (Khan Majlis, 1984: Col. Plates opp. 48), the fibre-enveloped dancers of certain 'Bali Aga' villages and the delicately folded formal palm-leaf headbands of mountain Sumbawa, Bali and Lombok. In Bengkulu, however, the veil of leaves that forms the bride's head-dress is now fashioned from silver Gasper and Pirngadie, 1927: 153), while in Bali and many other parts of Indonesia, the flowers and leaves previously used to create decorative head-dresses have been transformed into crowns of gold which still retain the essential floral form.
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Bark-cloth beaters, very similar to those still used today, have been found in a number of Neolithic archaeological sites (Bellwood,. 1979: 173-4).5 These stone mallets were obviously used to beat bark to form felted fabric. The texture of bark fabric and its potential as a raw material to fashion garments varies considerably. At one end of the spectrum, crude untreated pieces of bark were stitched together with fibre, a technique used to form effective protective coats for some Dayak warriors in Borneo. Softer, smoother, felted surfaces were achieved by soaking and pounding the bark fibres with mallets, and paper-fine quality was produced from the careful processing of the bark of certain trees.
One of the plants used to make fine bark-cloth, the paper mulberry (Broussonetia papyrifera), is one of the oldest cultivated plants in Southeast Asia (Bellwood, 1979: 139). The extent of its cultivation is uncertain although it was still being planted in Java in the nineteenth century (Kooijman, 1963: 58-62).6 The finest bark-cloth offered great freedom for design, and could be readily painted or printed with pigments, as in many traditional Balinese paintings. Some such paintings were executed on good quality white bark-cloth imported from Sulawesi well into this century (Forge, 1978: 9, Fig.48; Solyom and Solyom, 1985: 3). In Bali it is possibly significant that the calendars for the Balinese 210-day year (wuku) used for prediction were often on bark-cloth. According to some Balinese informants, bark-cloth was also the preferred fabric for death-cloths.7 With the spread of written scripts throughout the region, bark became the raw material used for sacred manuscripts, talismanic hieroglyphs and even magical cures for illness.8
This turn-of-the-century photograph shows women from mountainous Luzon in the Philippines wearing leaf skirts. Their male companion wears a woven cotton loincloth.
A 1929 photograph of two women from the island of Mentawai, off the west coast of Sumatra, wearing costume constructed of various leaves
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Painted decoration on bark-cloth throughout insular Southeast Asia ranges from broad, strong strokes to fine, detailed, linear patterns similar to those found on wood and bamboo carving. Paintings with soot and ochres have been found in Stone Age caves in the region,9 and painted bark-cloth made in