'Ikat' reveals the richness of Nusa Tenggara textiles

'Ikat' reveals the richness of Nusa Tenggara textiles

By Des Price

FLORES, East Nusa Tenggara (JP): East Nusa Tenggara, as well
as other parts of Indonesia, has retained a rich cultural
tradition of ikat-making on a large scale, which in many parts of
the world has declined due to high production costs and the
influences of mass media and industrialization.

People living in remote villages on Flores, Sumba and Lombok
very occasionally encounter individuals and small groups of
western backpackers on trails of adventure exploring the
lifestyles and cultures of the islanders.

Even so, it must have come as a great surprise when a group,
mostly western women in their late 50s and early 60s, arrived to
discover the wonders of ikat, single or double woven cloth, and
meet the people producing these colorful textiles with their
intricate patterns and motifs.

The group leader, Lena Nessle, was also the tour organizer and
plans trips to Indonesia from her home in the city of Gothenburg
in Sweden. She is a trained textile designer who is fascinated by
the way people live and work. This interest led her to coauthor a
book written in Swedish titled Ikat -- Grdnslvsa Mvnster (Ikat --
Limitless Designs). She first came to Indonesia a number of years
ago to research ikat-making for her book and to find for herself
the places where ikat is made. She was excited by the diversity
of designs and colors, along with the interesting people and
places that she discovered.

So much so that she wanted to share her discoveries with
others. This was the start of her idea to organize tours to East
Nusa Tenggara for the purpose of showing others the wonderful
places where the textiles are produced. At 62, her love of the
adventure of visiting remote communities and meeting the locals
has not dwindled, continuing to burn passionately.

On this occasion, 11 women and one man have escaped the minus
temperatures of Scandinavia -- instead of seeing moose and deer
tramping through the snow in their own northern wilderness, the
group see buffalo being worked in the tropical heat.

The members of the group talked enthusiastically about the
adventurous trip they have just been on. Ann-Marie, almost the
youngest in the group at 52, remembers fondly the sight that met
her eyes when they first arrived in Flores: "We arrived by
airplane and the first thing I saw was about half a kilometer of
women weaving ikat designs that would later become sarongs."

Ann-Marie makes textiles in Norway and was particularly
impressed with the small, neat, complicated motifs on the
textiles produced in Flores, which require a lot of time and
skill to make. This weaving tradition has not changed much in
Flores for the last 2,000 years.

The members of the group were only too aware of the cultural
and social differences between them and the locals they met. One
of the members of the group, Mia, recalled that the people were
often poor but loved to live and sing. She was amused by some of
the differences: "At home, from when we are small children, we
are taught not to stare at people. In Sumba, the locals often
stopped, stared and laughed at us big, white people. You felt
like a monkey!"

Vary

Ikat designs vary a great deal from island to island, and even
from village to village. The designs sometimes show the
significance of symbols in the lives of the local people. In
Flores, the group found ikat with life trees and fertility
symbols, while in East Sumba the ikat is likely to tell a story
through its motifs.

Ikat from Sumba is well known around the world, largely
because of the expressive and dramatic weavings, combined with
the use of vivid colors and imaginative story content, which
might include chiefs, soldiers and animals such as crocodiles and
horses.

In West Sumba, ikat has a functional role as people tend to
wear ikat, more so than in other parts of East Nusa Tenggara.

One of the women in the group proudly unfolded an ikat that
she bought in East Sumba. The ikat had been made for a chief of
Sumba in preparation for his death. Katherine explained in detail
the history and design content of the ikat: "Like most ikat,
this one's unique. It's a story about the chief's life and death,
and also about the significance of buffalo in these people's
lives. This is a bit of history and a living story. The weft is
said to have been made back in 1960.

"At the top you can see the chief's warriors along with white
swords. The chief can be seen sitting in his house surrounded by
musical instruments. Buffalo feature in many parts of the ikat --
they are probably also a sign of fertility. The blue things are
not so easy to identify, but they are chickens ... chickens have
a special place. The locals told me that they use chickens to get
on speaking terms with their ancestors, but I don't quite know
how.

"The deceased chief is being carried by the biggest and
strongest buffalo -- to be buried in the village. Under the
buffalo, upon which the king is placed, lie gold earrings, which
are a sign of wealth. Around him his warriors are dancing and
there are dancing horses. At the edge of the material you can see
skulls: they have always fought with their neighbors and the
winners take skulls. There are swords and the swords will be used
to sacrifice the buffalo so the buffalo follows the chief into
his death. Sometimes it can take one, two or even three years for
the villagers to gather enough animals to have a big funeral for
a chief. They need a lot of animals -- perhaps a hundred.

"This ikat was to be the first to dress the chief upon his
death. If the body starts to smell, they will wrap more cloth
around his body (until they have enough animals to sacrifice at
his funeral). I tried to ask our guide why the chief first sold
the ikat to our guide in 1996, but he didn't know. Anyway, I
bought it from the guide."

The future for ikat production in Indonesia is uncertain and
difficult to predict. Lena sees the tradition as moving, rather
than rapidly changing: "In Sumba, when they make ikat for selling
to collectors abroad, they don't make it any cheaper, but they do
make the weave more complicated and more interesting and the
patterns are more and more intricate. As long as there are people
who really care about the design and care about their work, there
will always be buyers."

There are copies of ikat which are made on large looms rather
than by small handlooms. In Sumba, where the backstrap loom is
used, the warp cannot be made very wide because the weaver has to
be able to put the shuttle in through each side of the warp and
remove it from the other side.

So, to get a wider ikat warp, two narrow pieces are produced
and sewn together. As wide pieces of warp ikat cannot be made
using the back strap loom, it is easy to tell that these are not
genuine. Dyes such as indigo and kombu (morinda citrifolia) have
traditionally been obtained naturally. But synthetic dyes have
become more and more commonplace, sometimes mixed with natural
dyes to make the colors look authentic.

Lena explains that when using natural dyes, the material is
dyed many times, such as with indigo where the material may be
dyed up to 10 times. "When you dye so many times, the color will
be shimmering. It's like the color is living. With kombu, you
also dye many times to get the real red color. With synthetic
dyes the color is not living. It's difficult to explain ... I
think Indonesians see it, but tourists don't."

Despite the unrest and instability in Indonesia, Lena is not
unduly worried about organizing her textile tours. Indeed, she is
planning another trip in June this year: "Many people ask me how
I dare to travel to Indonesia when there is so much trouble here.
I reply that the most dangerous place I often travel to is
Stockholm's central railway station (in Sweden)."

On the last day of their organized tour, the group proudly
displayed their ikat in the lobby of their hotel -- they had
bought so much ikat that they will each need to wear several
pieces as sarongs in order to avoid paying excess baggage charges
on their flight home.