Introduction: Indonesian Textiles at the Yale University Art Gallery

Indonesia has an exceptionally rich textile history. Weaving there developed into a high art, and Indonesian textiles are equal in aesthetic quality to the art forms that more commonly define the visual arts of a culture, such as painting and sculpture. Cloth is used to dress the human body around the world, but in Indonesia, textiles also have an unusually deep cultural significance. They play an essential part in many ceremonies and rituals, either as ostentatious displays or as offerings, and they are often essential in the gift exchanges that establish and emphasize social relationships. Maritime Southeast Asia has been at the crossroads of exchange between West and East for millennia, and direct connections with both South and East Asia have resulted in a particularly fertile mixture of Indigenous and outside social and religious ideas. Indonesian textiles should be appreciated with three characteristics in mind: their outstanding artistic quality, their deep cultural meaning, and their connection to ideas, designs, and economies far beyond the region.

Comprising more than 17,000 islands, Indonesia has the fourth largest population worldwide. The country is characterized by considerable geographical, ecological, and cultural diversity. Although the climate is mainly tropical, levels of rainfall vary greatly from island to island. The nonseasonal, continuously wet conditions at the equator support rainforests in Sumatra and Borneo, but this ecology is not conducive to intensive agriculture and cannot support large populations; the more densely populated regions, such as Java, have a distinct dry season. Seasonal rainfall, with a predictable dry season, is necessary for the type of rice cultivation common in much of Indonesia, which often involves irrigated rice fields on the slopes of active volcanoes. Diverse Austronesian languages are spoken throughout the archipelago, and in parts of Eastern Indonesia, one can also find non-Austronesian languages related to New Guinea. Social structures and kinship systems vary considerably and have been the topic of numerous anthropological studies, many of which have become classics in their field.¹

Yet despite this geographical and cultural diversity, the people of the region share certain technologies and elements of material culture. Historically, houses were built on stilts with a raised floor and prominent roof structure; walls were used as visual barriers but had little to no structural function (fig. 1). These architectural features are still used in buildings such as village temples or clan houses, which are important for rituals and ceremonies. Many cultures use a backstrap (body-tension) loom for weaving cloth, although some now use simple frame looms (fig. 2). For metalwork, a unique type of bamboo bellows is used (fig. 3).

Human habitation in the region goes back at least 55,000 years; the present Austronesian population originated in southern China and Taiwan and gradually moved into mainland and maritime Southeast Asia, becoming dominant possibly as early as 3500 B.C.E.² Bronze Age artifacts made in the Dong Son culture of Vietnam, in particular large kettledrums dating from around 300 B.C.E. to 100 C.E., have been found in many locations around the archipelago and point to early and sustained trade links. In exchange for bronze objects, traders from the mainland sought exotic items, such as plumes from the bird of paradise, which only lives in New Guinea and the Northern Moluccas. These brilliantly colored feathers were highly prized as dress ornaments, and many of the bronze drums, or situlas, show men wearing large headdresses with elaborate plumage (fig. 4).³

Indonesia’s geography, with short distances between the islands of the archipelago, invites contact and navigation, and from the first millennium C.E., it has been a hub of far-reaching connections, especially to South and East Asia but also to East Africa and the emerging Islamic world. From the seventh to the eleventh century, the port emporium of Srivijaya, on the east coast of southern Sumatra, near present-day Palembang, was a center of trade and intellectual exchange.⁴ It was a gathering place for merchants and emissaries and also became renowned as a teaching and learning community. Over the centuries, the port brought together Buddhist scholars traveling between India and East Asia, as well as Muslim merchants from the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea, on their way to South Asia and China. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, contacts with the Chola Empire of present-day Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, in South India, reinforced an appreciation of South Asian beliefs and artistic forms, yet these ideas and designs were integrated into a distinctly Indigenous culture. Both Hinduism and Buddhism gained a strong presence in Western Indonesia and merged with local beliefs, which generally focused on ancestor veneration and nature spirits. By the ninth century, Muslim navigators and merchants had passed through the ports of the region, but Islam did not gain significant influence in Indonesia until centuries later. Aceh, in Northern Sumatra, was one of the first realms to assimilate the Muslim faith, in the thirteenth century, at a time when its rulers had political and economic control over trade through the Strait of Malacca. Today Indonesia has the world’s largest Muslim population, although Hinduism remains dominant in Bali, and Christian communities are common in parts of Sumatra, Sulawesi, Flores, and Timor. Indigenous practices, though, remain relevant, especially in the context of life-cycle rituals and the veneration of ancestors.

A Brief History of Indonesian Textiles

Weaving in Indonesia has a very long history. For the Austronesian-speaking population of maritime Southeast Asia, linguistic evidence suggests that loom weaving (as distinct from basket weaving) goes back five thousand years. There is both linguistic and technological evidence for the early presence of weaving in Southeast Asia.⁵ The backstrap looms used throughout the region have similar features and functional parts. A bronze sculpture found in East Flores, in Eastern Indonesia, of a woman seated at a backstrap loom while nursing a child, today in the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra, dates to the sixth or seventh century C.E. (fig. 5). Stylistically it owes nothing to China or India, and the detailed depiction of the loom and textile link the figure to a weaving technology and textile aesthetic still used in Indonesia in the late twentieth century.⁶

The earliest detailed representations of Indonesian textiles come from the great Buddhist and Hindu structures in Java, built from the eighth and the ninth century C.E. onward. The temples at Borobudur and Prambanan feature relief sculptures that depict in exquisite detail the dress styles of princes and warriors as well as ordinary people. Representations of personal dress in other examples of stone and metalwork from the medieval period (ninth to thirteenth century) show that local fashions remained relatively unaffected by styles of dress from elsewhere in Asia. Both men and women kept a bare upper torso and donned a wraparound hip cloth. Tailored garments were not common, although cut-and-sewn warrior’s jackets appear on temple reliefs and are mentioned in Old Javanese literature.⁷

The designs and patterns of these wraparound textiles, however, reveal influences from outside Southeast Asia. From the ninth century on, Indian and East Asian designs were integrated into local weaving patterns, even while the manner of wearing the cloth remained specific to Southeast Asia. Early ninth-century Javanese sculptures show hip wrappers worn by men and women decorated mainly with band patterns, which are still found in many Indonesian ikat textiles today. In the tenth century, there was a shift toward overall patterns of linked circles or floral designs. This change is likely due to the influence of Indian textiles, which often feature large fields of connected patterns. From the tenth and eleventh centuries, representations of Indonesian textiles began to show strong similarities to Indian designs, indicating that the import of South Asian fabrics started to have a formative aesthetic influence on Southeast Asia. These overall patterns, which are depicted in considerable detail on relief panels and large sculptures of Hindu deities or Buddhist saints, are often identical to designs on Indian textiles that were traded across the Indian Ocean; some of these patterns also survive on rare examples of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century block-printed Indian cotton found in Egypt.⁸ These textiles have become primary evidence of the importance Southeast Asia played in the premodern trade history of the Indian Ocean. The influence of India and, to a lesser degree, China is significant, and one cannot appreciate the cultures of the region without paying attention to these far-reaching connections. But it is just as important to recognize Indigenous cultural and technological vitality. Southeast Asian cultures are known for absorbing but then transforming outside influences into something uniquely their own.

The earliest extant Indonesian weavings were found in South Sumatra and have been dated by radiocarbon analysis to the fifteenth century. Less than a dozen of these early cloths are currently known, and three are in the Yale University Art Gallery’s collection (figs. 6–8). They all are patterned with weft ikat, a resist-dye technique still used in mainland Southeast Asia and Sumatra and formerly also found in Java. The earliest is dated to the late fifteenth century, and two are from the seventeenth century. They have silk warp threads, and two have a cotton weft. Their weft-ikat designs share the same arrangements of birds, stylized crouching deer, and centralized geometric mandala patterns. This congruence suggests that the cloths were all woven in professional workshops, most likely associated with a court or temple. The textiles were made in multiple productions, following a standardized format in design and size, rather than as individual creations, but they are of astonishingly high quality.

The Making of Cloth

The two most common fibers used in Indonesian weaving are cotton and silk. Cotton may have been indigenous to Southeast Asia, but it was not utilized for weaving purposes until the early first millennium C.E., probably as the result of a technological transfer from India.⁹ Silk cultivation originated in China but was also likely introduced to mainland Southeast Asia during the first millennium C.E. In Indonesia, it only spread to the western islands. Prior to using cotton and silk, weavers made cloths with native bast fiber, which is occasionally still used today. In addition to woven textiles, barkcloth, which is not made on a loom, was in use until the early twentieth century, especially in Eastern Indonesia.

Synthetic dyes have been available since the late nineteenth century, although natural colorants are still in use and are frequently required for making ceremonial textiles. Dye plants that produce red and blue are particularly sought after: indigo provides blue, and Morinda citrifolia is an ancient Southeast Asian source for red. Lac, a resinous insect secretion that accumulates on the branches of certain plants, is used for dyeing silk red. In Western Indonesia, sumptuous garments were created with gold and silver metal thread, often inserted as a supplementary weft. These cloths are worn as waist wrappers or head and shoulder cloths. The color of textiles was, and is, of great importance, and certain colors or patterns are often meant to be worn for specific occasions and functions. Red, black, and white tend to have the most significant meanings. Color symbolism is a difficult topic to pursue in a cross-cultural survey, because the meaning of a particular color can shift radically from one context to another. White is most consistently connected with spirits and the divine, but the meanings attached to red and black vary from culture to culture. Among the Lamaholot people of Eastern Indonesia, for example, red is associated with positive strength and the divine, and a bridewealth cloth in a gift exchange at a marriage must be dyed a deep red. Their neighbors in Kedang, however, associate red with witchcraft and warfare, and their bridewealth textiles must be dark blue (classified as “black”).¹⁰

The major Indonesian patterning techniques can be divided into three groups. First is the plain weave, in which the weaver may introduce differently dyed threads into the warp and/or weft, creating stripes, wider bands, or a plaid effect. The technique is found worldwide wherever looms are used, and it is common throughout Southeast Asia, from the hills of Burma to Eastern Indonesia. It is a simple way of introducing different colors and patterns, yet it can result in extremely fine and elegant cloth. One example from the Gallery’s collection is the exquisite red-and-blue checkered plaid woven by the Minangkabau of Sumatra (fig. 9).

The second technique, which also creates patterning through weaving, is called supplementary warp or weft. As the name indicates, additional warp or weft threads are introduced to partly float above the plain weave of the ground fabric. Supplementary weft probably has an ancient history in the region. It is most widely used and especially highly developed in mainland Southeast Asia and Sumatra but is also found in Eastern Indonesia. Again, supplementary weaving is not a technically complex technique, but it can be used to create very intricate patterns. To make effective use of the technique, the weaver must keep track of the geometric build-up of patterns. To do so, she may use another cloth or a pattern guide with sticks inserted to indicate when the supplementary weft or warp are to change.

The third patterning group involves resist-dye techniques, of which ikat is the most widespread. The name derives from the Malay word for tie; the design is tied into the warp or weft threads (or, in some rare instances, into both warp and weft), and the threads are dyed prior to weaving. Southeast Asia may have been one of the earliest regions to develop this technique, along with Central and possibly South Asia.¹¹ It is one of the most complicated and labor-intensive techniques for patterning a textile, and like supplementary weaving techniques, it is an outstanding example of applied mathematics. The design is built up from small knot units that are arranged across the warp or weft to create the pattern. Southeast Asian weavers have developed the technique to the highest degree and have created masterpieces throughout the region.

Three other resist techniques—batik and two versions of tie-dye (tritik and plangi)—are used in more localized areas. For tritik, the designs are created by adding stitches to cloth and pulling the thread to gather areas before dying, and for plangi, by gathering and binding areas of cloth before dying. Tie-dyed cotton cloths are made in Java and Sulawesi. Batik, for which the pattern is drawn with a liquid resist onto the surface of the cloth prior to dying, is most commonly associated with textiles from Java, where all the royal courts have, or formerly had, their own batik workshops. Batik designs in Java are primarily found on wraparound skirt cloths. Javanese batik attracted European attention and was much admired by the late nineteenth century. Designs created in Indo-Chinese workshops in North Java became especially popular as collectors’ items among Dutch colonial officers and their wives. The origin and history of Javanese batik and its use for dress is uncertain. The technique may have been imported from India or could be an independent innovation. Jan Christie suggested that batik may have been used in Java by the twelfth century.¹²

The Cultural Meanings of Textiles

Why do textiles have such strong cultural meanings in Southeast Asian societies? The reasons for their importance vary from one society to the next; any proper analysis therefore needs to provide specific detailed historical and ethnographic accounts. In this volume, it is only possible to highlight certain concepts that come up with some consistency. Indonesian textiles are closely linked with Indigenous ideas about gender as well as social and symbolic values. They are associated with women and the female aspects of society, which is inevitable since textiles are woven by women and the cloth given as a gift during a marriage ceremony comes from the woman’s side of the union between two lineages. As the bearers of children, women are affiliated with fertility, and the textiles they make are sometimes part of life-giving ceremonies, such as weddings and births. Traditionally, women in Southeast Asia have had relatively high status. They are seen as one side of two complementary elements of worldly existence—female complements male, and vice versa, as do right and left, up and down, and odd and even numbers. The high status of women may explain why their expertise in weaving also enjoys such prestige.

There is evidence in at least some Southeast Asian societies that the technology of weaving, particularly the peculiarities of the original backstrap loom, are part of the reason textiles are held in such high esteem. The earliest and still most common type of backstrap loom uses a continuous warp, so that the finished cloth comes off the loom as a circular structure. For utilitarian purposes, the continuous warp is cut, and the cloth becomes a rectangle. For ceremonial uses, though, the cloth often is not cut but retains its circular shape, with the continuous warp threads remaining intact. This is the case for the double-ikat geringsing cloths woven in Bali, which play an important role in healing ceremonies. The circular shape is also retained for textiles given as marriage presentations in some Eastern Indonesian societies on Flores and in the Solor Islands; the bridewealth cloth in those cultures is an elaborately patterned woman’s skirt. The continuous warp threads are a metaphor for the continuity of life and the lines of descent initiated by the wedding.

In wedding ceremonies, textile gifts are always presented by the female side of a union, either by the weaver herself or by her family or lineage. Bridewealth cloths often also function as dress items and are worn on ceremonial occasions. The gift exchange between two lineages (clans) is initiated with a marriage, an occasion that brings two families together. Gifts of cloth and dress items continue to be given as children are born and grow up. At the end of a person’s life, cloth gifts are again offered at the funeral and may accompany the deceased into the grave. In Indonesia, one cannot marry without textiles, and it would be impossible to have a proper burial. Textiles hold society together.

1. P. E. Josselin de Jong (in Josselin de Jong 1977) provided an excellent introduction to many of these classic texts and gave an introductory overview to Indonesian studies. ↩︎

2. For an introduction and general survey of the early history of the region, see Glover and Bellwood 2004. ↩︎

3. Swadling 1996. ↩︎

4. Wolters 1967; and Hall 1976, 61–105. ↩︎

5. Otto Dempwolff (in Dempwolff 1938, 135) identified the Austronesian word tenun as “weave.” Robert Blust refined the definition to refer specifically to loom weaving, rather than the wider category including, for example, basketry; see Blust 1976, 19–43. ↩︎

6. Adams 1977, 87–109; and Maxwell 2006. ↩︎

7. Jákl and Hoogervorst 2017; and Sardjono 2019. ↩︎

8. Barnes 1997. ↩︎

9. Johnson and Decker 1983, as cited in Barnes 1997, 46n8. ↩︎

10. Barnes 1989, 92–93. ↩︎

11. The term ikat is not generally recognized in local cultures; each region has its own word for the technique. The Malay word is used here, however, as it is widely recognized around the world. ↩︎

12. Christie 1993a, 16–18. ↩︎