Vibrant textiles made in Indonesia offer a glimpse into the ceremonies in which they‘re worn, and into the ritual of handweaving itself John Goddard Rural villagers across Indonesia conduct their lives with ceremony and ritual.
When corn is planted, cotton is picked, or rice advances to a more mature phase, villagers perform small, prescribed acts to encourage creation and growth.
To mark human passages, villagers also wrap themselves in ceremonial textiles. Practices differ from island to island, but events marking birth, puberty, marriage and death invariably feature hand-woven fabrics of natural dyes and motifs hundreds of years old.
I love these cloths. I love the warmth of their colours and bold symmetry of their designs. I also love the idea that in a remote island village, knowledgeable people can transform ordinary-looking plants into fabrics so complex and vibrant that they are works of art.
It is hard to find such works for sale, however. Museums seem to have snapped up all the quality vintage ones.
And in many places, handweaving traditions are disappearing. Freer trade, changing technologies, the loosening of tribal obligations in favour of individual freedoms – all might advance human society but they also conspire against time-consuming hand labour, no matter how highly valued and culturally expressive.
That is why, when a friend told me of a shop that sells new cloth of rare excellence in Bali, Indonesia, I decided to visit.
Threads of Life, the shop is called. Found in a narrow street near a rice field in the village of Ubud, it is the retail outlet of a co-operative by the same name, supporting handweavers working with natural dyes across Indonesia‘s eastern archipelago.
"What are people looking for when they are buying one of these cloths?," Threads of Life co-founder William Ingram asked rhetorically when I arrived.
"It‘s not just cloth," he said. "It‘s story, it‘s cultural integrity, it‘s support for the continuation of natural dyes. It‘s wanting to feel some connection with the tradition and the weaver."
Store manager Wayan Weti showed me around. One by one, she unfurled fabulous pieces – from Sumba featuring animal motifs, and from Flores decorated with beadwork.
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I particularly liked one from West Timor. The price: nearly $1,000 (Canadian). Three days in a row I returned to admire it and, on the fourth day, I bought it.
"Who was the weaver?" I asked Weti.
"Benedicta Beli," she said, checking her records. Beli, the entry showed, lived in Luniup village, Biboki region, on the island of West Timor.
I wanted to meet her.
I booked a flight and a few days later landed at Kupang, at the southwestern tip of West Timor. Luniup lies at the northeastern tip.
I hired a car and driver, and for two days rode from one extremity of the region to the other, over a mountain range. At the town of Kefamenanu, I stopped for the night and the next morning was joined by Yovita Meta, head of the regional weavers‘ co-op Yayasan Tafean Pah.
Pavement disappeared into dirt. Dirt gave way to boulders. At the end of the road stood a village of bamboo walls and thatched roofs, with a few goats and chickens.
And there was Benedicta Beli. We found her with about 20 other women under an open-walled thatched shelter, weaving.
"They‘ve been expecting you," Meta said.
News of my plans had somehow reached the village. All the women were dressed in their best blouses and finest ceremonial cloths, and they had laid out the entire cloth-making process for me to see.
Three women led me to a nearby cotton patch to pick raw cotton. Others showed me how, in three separate stages, they separate cotton from the seeds and prepare it for thread.
I watched women spin thread by hand and, in another area, dye it in solutions created from local roots, barks and leaves. Each had been harvested in a different season and processed differently, one soaked with lime, another boiled and dried in the sun repeatedly over several weeks.
To create patterns, the weavers tie off spots to prevent one dye or another from penetrating the thread, a complex process called "ikat," which means "to tie" or "to bind."
The finished cloth is also called "ikat." The women weave them on handlooms, often sitting communally as they did the day I visited. One piece generally takes two years, and a weaver generally has three or four going at once.
The cloths are so good that Australian museums have displayed them.
Beli and I had no language in common. She looked pleased, however, when I sat and watched her weave, allowing myself, as Ingram put it, "to feel some connection with the tradition and the weaver."
Source: www.thestar.com (3 September 2007)
