Textiles show binding thread of culutres
Textiles show binding thread of culutres
Mehru Jaffer, Contributor, Jakarta
There is much that is bewitching about Indonesia, but the
magical spell cast on people by textiles here is legendary.
Irwan Holmes first traveled to Jakarta in 1967. He grew so
obsessed he with the batik that he saw that he dropped his art
studies at a U.S. university to begin lessons in batik painting
on cloth from artisans.
In 1970, he decided to make Indonesia his permanent home.
Over the years, he has collected a rare collection of textiles
from across the country.
Spreading out a Balinese ritual cloth that he believes is at
least 100 years old, Irwan points to the motifs of people engaged
in the sport of boxing with great glee.
One piece even uses the pattern of the American flag.
One favorite features yet another ceremonial cloth from Bali
called Tirtanadi, or holy waters, probably woven in the early
years of the last century.
Silken yarn is used to create a pattern that strongly
resembles a canvas of modern, abstract art.
The oldest piece of cloth is another altar cloth folded inside
a copper box that is intricately carved with floral motifs from
the times of the pre-Islamic Majapahit rulers of east Java.
Another textile freak is Inger McCabe Elliot, a
photojournalist and author of Batik: Fabled Cloth of Java.
She has emotional recollections of a colorful day in 1963 when
the first became acquainted with the splendor of Java's batik,
which turned her black-and-white world into a rainbow of glorious
colors.
Inger recalled being pleased and, at the same time, disturbed
as she saw the amazing textiles on which lions roared
ferociously, ducks paddled serenely, and mythical animals leaped,
while grains of rice dappled the cloth.
She observed that batik artists splashed their colors about
with controlled abandon.
And they break all the rules.
Somehow, they are able to use green with red and end up with
something that does not look like a Christmas card: somehow, they
can combine pink, yellow, brown and aqua blue without bringing to
mind Mae West's boudoir.
Inger was so ecstatic that she came to Indonesia in the 1970s
to unravel the mystery of batik herself.
It is quite possible that, at first, people here had no use
for cloth. They were likely content to clothe themselves in the
shade of the lush, green rain forest that surely covered the
entire length and breadth of this tropical paradise.
It must have been merchants from miles away who came with the
first meters of material here. Chinese records from 1,400 years
ago mention a king in northern Sumatra who wore silk. And it is
suspected that the silk he wore at that time was imported.
Cloth was clearly a prized possession only the rich and mighty
could afford to covet in those early days.
For a long time, the most important use for the textiles were
as a gift to loved ones, or as an offering to God.
This importance came both from the real value of textiles, and
from their symbolic value as the product of the magical hands of
human beings.
For many Indonesians, textiles have sacred origins in myth and
this aura is not completely lost to this day.
In Splendid Symbols: Textiles and Tradition in Indonesia,
Mattielelle Gittinger illustrated how Arabs and other traders had
made cloth the primary medium of exchange.
Early in the 16th century it was said that, on the spice-rich
island of Maluku, Indian cloths were held in great value.
Every man toiled to own a great pile of the cloths so that,
when they were folded and laid out on top of each other, they
could have been stacked into a pile several feet tall.
To possess that much of the cloth signified what it meant to
be free and alive.
If taken captive, the owner was ransomed for nothing less than
the very pile of cloth he owned. In 1603, the price of imported
cloth was worth 40 pounds of nutmeg on the island of Banda.
During most of its 2000-year history, Indonesia has been an
important trade route for merchants from around the globe.
Like a vast net, it has caught migrating people from
everywhere, along with their way of life and beliefs and the land
has captured the imaginations of scholars, artists, fortune
hunters, and travelers for centuries, all of whom have
contributed to the romantic musings about the region's fortunes
in aromatic spices and sandalwood.
The Java coast was also visited by Marco Polo, Ferdinand
Magellan, Sir Francis Drake, and Saint Francis Xavier, trade
bringing with it both material and spiritual rewards.
Along with the goods also came a succession of religions --
Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and Christianity -- which left their
permanent influence here.
All of these experiences, both foreign and local, eventually
married and transformed into robust patterns that are being woven
to this day on luxurious looking textiles, as if with the thread
of life itself.
It is now possible to share some of these human experiences
immortalized on rare and unusual textiles, along with an array of
tools used in the variegated activity of picking cotton, the
making of yarn, and finally the weaving and wafting of cloth
itself.
An exhibition of textiles chosen by the Dharmawangsa Hotel
from Irwan's vast collection that will be inaugurated by Ghea S.
Panggabean, one of Indonesia's leading fashion designers here.
The exhibition begins on Feb. 16, and runs through Feb. 24 in
the Bimasena Club in the lobby of the Dharmawangsa Hotel. For
more information, call 725-8668.