"This book aims to demonstrate that Indonesia's woven textiles can be developed and applied to interior design and lifted out of their traditional context to become relevant in the modern world. It covers its traditional meaning, its journey from the traditional context into the world of modernity and also the exploration of new ideas. Hopefully, it will motivate more people to pay greater attention to this cottage industry and consequently give positive encouragement in terms of increasing local weaver's income and to preserve the quality of our heritage."--Publisher description.
Since the 1970s Mary Hunt Kahlenberg has been building her collection of exquisite ceremonial garments and sacred textiles from throughout Indonesia's chain of tropical islands. Dating from the past 500 years, they are brought together in this book.
Weaving in the Batak region of North Sumatra is an ancient art practised by women, and exhibits some of the oldest design and technical features in the Indonesian archipelago. Since colonial annexation at the turn of the twentieth century, innovative Batak weavers from the Lake Toba region in northern Sumatra have successfully adapted their art to new economic and social circumstances but at great cost. In recent decades, weaving has fallen into decline and the tradition is threatened, while at the same time Batak textiles are highly prized in museum collections around the world. Legacy in cloth offers the first definitive study of the woven heritage of the Toba, Simalungun, and Karo Batak. The most complete analysis of Batak textiles ever published, it provides a record of more than 100 different design types, including archival and contemporary photographs showing how the textiles are woven and how they are used in Batak culture."
Drawn from one of the world's leading textile collections, this magnificently presented array of traditional weavings from the Indonesian archipelago provides a unique window into the region's cultures, rites, and history. Gathered over the course of four decades, the Thomas Murray collection of Indonesian textiles is one of the most important privately owned collections of its type in the world. The objects comprise ritual clothing and ceremonial cloths that tell us much about the traditions of pre-Islamic Indonesian cultures, as well as about the influences of regional trade with China, India, the Arab world, and Europe. As with the earlier volume, Textiles of Japan (Prestel, 2018), the book focuses on some of the finest cloths to come out of the archipelago, presenting each object with impeccable photographs, colors, patterns, and intricate details. Geographically arranged, this volume pays particular attention to textiles from the Batak and the Lampung region of Sumatra, the Dayak of Borneo, and the Toraja of Sulawesi, as well as rare textiles from Sumba, Timor and other islands. Readers will learn about the intricate and highly developed traditions of dyeing, weaving, and beading techniques that have been practiced for centuries, resulting in a breathtaking collection of motifs, patterns, dyes, and adornments. Original texts by leading international experts draw on the latest research to offer historical context, unspool the mysteries behind ancient iconography, and provide new insights into dating and provenance. At once opulent and scholarly, this book arrives at a moment of growing interest in Southeast Asian culture and carries the imprimatur of one of the art world's leading collectors. Full List of Contributors: Lorraine Aragon, Joanna Barrkman, Chris Buckley, Kristal Hale, Valerie Hector, Janet Alison Hoskins, Itie van Hout, Eric Kjellgren, Fiona Kerlogue, Brigitte Khan Majlis, Robyn Maxwell, Thomas Murray, and Sandra Sardjono.
Floating Threads represents an attempt to catalogue float weave techniques used to decorate Batik cloth throughout the archipelago and hints at possible lines of distribution. Being a coffee-table book, photographs are an important part of the story. Our main sources for photography have been collections in Indonesia's own provincial museums and the National Museum of Indonesia with gaps filled by local collectors and foreign museums when not available in Indonesia. Unfortunately, Indonesia's provincial museums were established after 1950, when specimens of some textiles were no longer available in the country, the prime examples of this being the pinatikan of North Sulawesi and the Kalumpang (West Sulawesi) textiles featured in Chapter Two. The photographed textiles cover the 19th century to the present, complementing the text which reaches into the distant past and includes recent experimentations, for contemporary fabrics are as important as historical weavings to the continuation of Indonesia's precious textile traditions. Modernization is the only way to keep weavers interested in plying their trade, stimulated by the popularity of their products. New forms will always arise to replace old styles that have fallen out of favor, but there will always be a weaver or two who will go beyond craft-production to the level of fine art, as the reader will see in this book. The discussion has been expanded with technical details of specific weaves by the Japanese scholar Keiko Kusakabe, a PhD candidate who has been trekking through the difficult terrain of West and northern South Sulawesi for over a decade in her quest for information on traditional textile production techniques in the region. Keiko keeps these techniques alive by teaching them to her students in Japan.
Here is a visual record of one of the great untold stories of Asian design history: the trade in Indian textiles to Southeast and East Asia. For over 1000 years Indian cloths were traded for spices and the forest and mineral wealth of the East by Asian, Arab and European merchants.
What knowledge is conserved about ikat textiles and their use in the Indonesian archipelago consists primarily of the records of missionary and scientific fieldwork, predominantly compiled by non-Indonesians. The coverage is thin-many weaving regions are covered by only one or two sources, and several regions have never been studied in detail. Much traditional knowledge is being lost, especially in the more remote island regions in the Indonesian archipelago, which require a concerted effort if any trace of their culture is to survive. UMAG hopes to contribute to the broader project by means of this publication, which shows ikat culture through a close reading of examples from over fifty weaving regions-several covered for the first time-and an introduction to the conditions, beliefs and customs of the various peoples who have created and used them. The book was enriched by the collaboration of twelve region-specific experts who gave critical feedback on chapters or provided details on techniques and motifs that only they could have provided. - Verlagsangaben.
There exist numerous free-standing figurative sculptures produced in Java between the eighth and fifteenth centuries whose dress display detailed textile patterns. This surviving body of sculpture, carved in stone and cast in metal, varying in both size and condition, remains in archaeological sites and museums in Indonesia and worldwide. The equatorial climate of Java has precluded any textiles from this period surviving. Therefore this book argues the textiles represented on these sculptures offer a unique insight into the patterned splendour of the textiles in circulation during this period. This volume contributes to our knowledge of the textiles in circulation at that time by including the first comprehensive record of this body of sculpture, together with the textile patterns classified into a typology of styles within each chapter.
