of high status.
Unlike the usual practice in Southeast Asia, where each woman ties the ikat threads for her own cloths, the tying of the warp ikat for the huge ceremonial hangings of the Toraja is a communal activity involving a number of women working together. This group of women live in the Rongkong district.
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The lozenge or rhomb is a common pattern used as a separate isolated motif, as part of a continuous repeated design, or inter-meshed and embellished with other decorative devices. The intersection of popular diagonal patterns may produce a lattice grid. As the diminishing diamond-within-a-diamond pattern, it provides an overall twill effect on certain textiles such as the blouses of the Karen women of northern Thailand, the belts of the Toba Batak of Sumatra and the coverings of the Kalinga of Luzon. The diamond sometimes appears on its own but is also used in conjunction with hooks or V shapes. The hooked lozenge, sometimes combined with a smaller lozenge, is one of the most basic forms used to represent living creatures, both human and animal.
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Many of these designs have a far wider distribution than the Southeast Asian region. One author, noting the universality of the hooked lozenge as a decorative device, has suggested that it may have originally been the woman's symbol, signifying birth (Allen, 1981), though this explanation is rarely offered by Southeast Asian textile artisans. It is common for similar patterns and motifs to be interpreted differently by weavers across the region, and there are even conflicting accounts within a single ethnic group about the actual meaning of certain schematic designs.42
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Many minimal designs are composed of the most simple arrangements of dots and dashes. Such basic patterns are painted on to bark, formed by beads and shells, and worked in simple forms of ikat and wax-resist batik. The rough handspun village batiks of Tuban on the north coast of Java contain all-over patterns of dots that make a sharp contrast to the more complex and elaborate batik patterns executed on fine commercial fabric elsewhere in Java. Combinations of dashes form chevron patterns and some of the most elaborate ikat designs of the region are actually composed of dots or are filled with intricate stippling.
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Triangular shapes are an ancient motif in Southeast Asian art, and the narrow bands on one of the earliest dateable textiles found in insular Southeast Asia - a fourteenth- or fifteenth-century warp ikat abaca cloth from a burial site - includes double rows of small triangles (Solheim, 1981: 79; Roces, 1985: 9). The adoption of triangles into border patterns allows unlimited scope for decorative filling and elaboration. These motifs are often identified by very specific terms. To the Ifugao of central Luzon, the triangles denote rice sheaves, or when they are displayed in pairs, a dragonfly (Ellis, 1981: 224), while the people of Tanimbar identify these motifs as flags (McKinnon, 1989). Triangles are also associated with sharp and dangerous objects, such as daggers and teeth, which will protect either the person wearing the cloth or the central motif it contains. This interpretation is offered by Iban weavers nowadays for the elaborate end pattern of triangular points used to enclose the field patterns on pua sungkit textiles.
(detail) kumo ceremonial cloth; hanging T'boli people, Mindanao, Philippines abaca fibre, dyes warp ikat 163.0 x 370.0 cm Australian National Gallery 1984.1216
This huge abaca red, black and white hanging is composed of three recently woven panels. These textiles are especially prominent at betrothal and marriage ceremonies. The central ikat panel displays the bangala pattern depicting a person within the security of a house. The hooked decorations on the sides of the hexagons are likened to the roof ornaments on old traditional houses, and the figures that are enclosed within this grid represent humans (Casal, 1978). The hooked rhomb image has sometimes been interpreted as a female symbol and some of the more realistic human figures do appear to be giving birth to smaller images of the same shape. The bangala is also a popular T'boli tattoo pattern.
(detail) kain sruwal material for trousers Javanese people, Nggaji, Tuban district, Java, Indonesia handspun cotton, natural dyes batik 150.6 x 58.0 cm Australian National Gallery 1984.490
In the past throughout rural Java, men wore knee-length pants made of this type of cloth - locally woven, plain, checked or striped fabric known as lurik, which is sometimes decorated with batik patterns. An arrowhead pattern of small white batik dots, known as 'soft rain' (udan liris), stands out against the blue-black ground which is referred to as 'blackened' (irengan). The dyes are obtained from natural indigo (known in this district as tom) and a special type of wood (kayu tingz). In the Tuban district, trousers made from this type of fabric are worn by the groom as a change of dress (salin manten) during a wedding (R. Heringa, personal communication, 1984). Twentieth century
pha lo hua chang; pha lop elephant's headcloth; sleeping sheet Tai Lue people, Laos; Thailand handspun cotton, silk, natural and synthetic dyes supplementary weft weave 146.0 x 45.0 cm Australian National Gallery 1984.3191
pha biang ceremonial shawl Tai Nuea people, Laos silk, cotton, natural dyes supplementary weft weave 107.5 x 41.0 cm Australian National Gallery 1987.1819
The major diamond pattern on each of these Tai cloths is built up of increasingly wider and more complex patterns and reveals the endless variations that can be developed from a limited number of simple ornamental designs. The mid-twentieth-century Tai Lue textile is based on the structure of an elephant headcloth (pha lo hua chang), although recently such cloths have been used as sleeping sheets (pha lop) presented at marriage by young women to their mother-in-laws (P. Cheesman, personal communication, 1989). Bound by red fabric, it presents a bold diamond configuration in red, blue-black and white cotton. On this cloth the usual plain central section is no longer evident. Schematic animal figures and geometric designs have been subtly incorporated within the large hooked diamond motifs and into the surrounding bands of both cloths, although the silk thread of the nineteenth-century Tai Nuea shawl has permitted clearer images to be woven. Mythical creatures appear in the borders of both textiles, in particular the twin naga serpents and bird-like creatures within the cream, green, gold and light-blue bordering bands of the Tai Nuea cloth.
(detail) tama woman's ceremonial skirt; ceremonial gift Palué people, Palué, Indonesia handspun cotton, natural dyes warp ikat 170.0 x 72.0 cm Australian National Gallery 1986.1921
The warp ikat cloths from the tiny volcanic island of Palue, off the north coast of central Flores, exhibit bright red and black colours which are quite distinctive and may be influenced by the limited sources of water on this barren island. The combination of tiny ikat dots, used to build schematic patterns in bands, is a feature of these cloths. Fine old tama are now rare on Palue, and certain cloths still in the possession of elderly women are believed to have special healing qualities, and are used to treat the skin diseases that are a recurring problem on the island. The motifs on this twentieth-century example are said to represent natural objects such as corn, tubers, chickens' feet, pig-pens and serrated knives.
These are a few of many schematic motifs and patterns that can be traced back to very early Southeast Asian
