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Young Man’s Dancing Waist Wrapper (Bidak), ILE2006.4.311

Title Young Man’s Dancing Waist Wrapper (Bidak)
Culture Lampung or Bengkulu
Geography Sumatra, Indonesia
Date mid‑17th to 18th century
Medium Silk, cotton, and silver thread with ramie core; supplementary weft
Dimensions a: 109 1/16 × 29 15/16 in. (277 × 76 cm); b: 111 7/16 × 29 15/16 in. (283 × 76 cm)
Credit Line Robert J. Holmgren and Anita E. Spertus Collection, Promised gift of Thomas Jaffe, B.A. 1971
Inv. No. ILE2006.4.311
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These two identical cloths have bands with rows of small dragon snakes, stars, and a continuous vine. They alternate with red and dark brown weft stripes. Both cloths have a wide band at one end, with a pair of dragon snakes confronting a peacock inside an architectural structure and additional small stylized human figures, peacocks, and dragon snakes.

The cloths have a silk and a cotton and silk weft. The supplementary-weft metal thread, now deteriorated, was gilded paper with a ramie core. Radiocarbon analysis dates the textiles to between the mid-seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.1 —RB

  1. For the carbon-14 dating results, see the Appendix. ↩︎