Sumba ikat: Preserved trade coupled with fading knowledge
Evi Mariani, The Jakarta Post, Sumba Island, East Nusa Tenggara
Within the realm of textiles, weaving from Sumba is one of the world's best-known arts, and has already become a major attraction to visitor worldwide to the remote barren island.
The recognition is a justified one. The craft is intricate, demanding great dexterity and patience, which results in breathtaking pieces of cloth.
Among many preserved Sumba traditions, like weddings and funerals, weaving is likely to continue for a very long time because, besides being sought after by tourists and collectors, Sumba people themselves still produce it for their own everyday use.
The Sumbanese have two main groups of cloth: one is called ikat, the other hikung. Ikat, meaning to tie, is made by tying palm leaves onto white threads and dyeing them repeatedly until it shows the desired motifs. Hikung is made by weaving different colored-cotton yarns into interesting motifs.
At several villages in eastern Sumba -- even those that are rarely visited -- women can be seen weaving in their porches. Moreover, the skill has been passed on continuously from one generation to another.
For Ama Tukang, a resident of Kallu in Waingapu, East Sumba, all five of his children, even the males, produce woven and tie- dyed cloth in the house.
He sells a lot of beautiful and valuable ikat and hikung cloth priced from Rp 200,000 (US$22.2) to Rp 5 million.
Other families in Praiyawang and Pau, Rende, the most famous ikat area, also rely on the ikat trade, on top of agriculture.
In the Umbu Makambombu and Kamba Ipu families the youngest generation is learning the art of weaving.
"We teach the girls ikat skills from elementary school," Kamba Ipu said.
However, not all the weavers knew the stories behind the motifs.
With the exception of Ama Tukang, they usually had limited background information to hand.
Ama Tukang explained a few stories behind some particular ikat cloth his family had made. For example, the cloth that commanded the highest price of Rp 5 million had a motif that belonged to royal families.
"Sumbanese used to weave this motif in the dark, secretly, because they risked their lives weaving it," he said. "Royal guards could barge into the house and punish them if they found out what was going on."
He added that, nowadays, weavers could make such motifs without fearing for their lives.
But he said that some weavers had also forgotten about stories behind the motifs, so that, sometimes, they did not follow the traditional motif patterns.
Sumba ikat has different sets of motifs for every occasion and caste.
Other weavers could not provide even a basic story about the items they produced with their own hands.
"It's a depiction of a snake with a fish's tail," a Pau weaver said, stated the obvious to The Jakarta Post when asked about a hikung motif.
To find out more about ikat, it seems people had better consult the various textbooks, written mostly by foreigners.
Brigitte Khan Majlis wrote in her 1991 bilingual book, Woven Messages: Indonesian Textile Tradition in Course of Time, that Dutch museums, since the 1920s, had acquired well-documented collections, invaluable in studying the development of patterns.
"The last 30 years have seen important research into the functions of textiles in Sumbanese society; they are among the best researched in Indonesia," she wrote, quoting foreign names like Adams, Bolland and Geirnaert as references.
Not just knowledge. The best cloth is mostly in the hands of foreign collectors rather than Indonesians, let alone locals.
Most weaving families usually greet local tourists with sincere warmth; they will happily display all their cloth and offer it to visitors. But they never insist you buy it because they know most Indonesians cannot afford the more expensive pieces.
"It's OK, you don't have to buy this; it's beautiful, right? Last week I sold a cloth similar to this for Rp 10 million to a Swede," Umbu Makabombu said, knowing that most locals would only sigh in wonderment at the sale.