'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.