This black belt and cumberbund have a braided structure. Both items come from the court (kraton) of Surakarta (also known as Solo). The court of Serakarta was known for belts woven from human hair. They may have had a talismanic significance, as suggested by Majlis, who published a similar pair in the Art Insititute of Chicago’s Bakwin Collection.1
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Majlis, Brigitte Kahn. The Art of Indonesian Textiles: The E. M. Bakwin Collection at the Art Institute of Chicago. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007., 73–74, no. 37. See also Solyom, Bronwen, and Garrett Solyom. “Notes and Observations on Indonesian Textiles.” In Threads of Tradition: Textiles of Indonesia and Sarawak, ed. Joseph Fisher, 15–33. Berkeley: University of Californai Press, 1979., 15. Helen Ibbitson Jessup (in Jessup, Helen Ibbitson. Court Arts of Indonesia. New York: The Asia Society Galleries and Harry N. Abrams, 1990., 144 and fig. 114:155) also published an example, but no further information is provided. —RB ↩︎