unwoven sections of the warp fringe as wefts into a new warp that lies across the end of the woven fabric. The effect is a strong bright striped band (kabakil).
dodot royal ceremonial skirtcloth Indramayu district, Java, Indonesia cotton, natural dyes batik 207.0 x 357.5 cm Australian National Gallery 1984.3163
Dodot, voluminous ceremonial batik wraps, are more than twice as large as kain panjang skirtcloths. They are decorated in patterns appropriate to their use by the Javanese nobility as ceremonial and dance costume. This is a version of the scenes of cosmic mountain and forest landscape known as semen in which the chevron peaks of mountain ranges and vague representations of buildings, possibly shrines, can be discerned. The huge, stylized, double-wing motif, the mirong, appears in each corner of the dodot. It is often identified as the garuda bird of Hindu mythology, which, over time, has become a symbol of many Southeast Asian courts. Other smaller mirong and far (the single-wing motif) are scattered throughout the freely drawn design. This early twentieth-century batik is dyed in the unusual olive tones of the Indramayu district, west of Cirebon on Java's north coast, where Javanese and Sundanese cultures blend.
tali banang man's ceremonial sword-belt Buginese people, Sulawesi, Indonesia cotton, natural dyes tablet weaving 12.0 x 380.0 cm Australian National Gallery 1984.1989
The Islamic inscription in Kufic calligraphy reads 'There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is His prophet'. While this is written in Arabic, inscriptions on other textiles from the Southeast Asian region also appear in local Malay languages. Tablet-woven bands were used as belts, straps, bindings and even stitched into special betel-nut bags by the women of central and south-west Sulawesi. This nineteenth-century sword-belt is formed from one long strip using a rare tablet weaving method which includes even the tubular loop. The colours, indigo-blue and white with red borders, may have evoked the same talismanic protection for the warrior as strands of twined threads in these tricolours often do elsewhere in Southeast Asia.
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The textile arts of Southeast Asia reflect these diverse influences: the ancestor figures of earliest legend, the sacred mandala of the Hindu-Buddhist world, the zodiac menagery of Chinese iconography, the flowing calligraphy of Islam and the lace of the West. This book explores some of these foreign influences and the imaginative and exciting local responses to the new ideas and materials.
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The study begins by examining the earliest forms of textiles and the decorative techniques associated with them. Some of the essential raw materials have an ancient history in Southeast Asia and prehistorians and archaeologists provide clues to a number of the earliest textile techniques, designs and patterns. Certain motifs and symbols, still evident today, seem to have had a very long history throughout the region. Since textiles are an integral part of Southeast Asian life, an exploration of the most ancient cultural practices and social organization contributes to an understanding of the functions of cloth.
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It is with this ancient but well-established artistic base that the two earliest and strongest cultural forces in the region - India and China - interacted. Geographic proximity has contributed to this process since certain parts of Southeast Asia have had a more intensive and continuous contact. This is particularly evident where the ethnic, linguistic and cultural influence of southern China is to be found among many of the peoples of northern Thailand, Burma, Laos and Vietnam. A number of ethnic groups are also spread across southern China into neighbouring states. In a similar fashion, the Naga people straddle the border between India and Burma.
tengkuluak; kain sandang woman's headcloth; shouldercloth Minangkabau people, west Sumatra, Indonesia silk, cotton, gold thread, natural dyes supplementary weft weave, bobbin lace 246.0 x 83.5 cm Australian National Gallery 1984.576
This sumptuous ceremonial textile has wide, gold and silk, striped end sections which glow against a rich purple centre. The major motifs are variations on stars (bintang). While cloths of this supplementary weft style have been made for centuries, the influence of European fashion and textile techniques has led to the addition of lace edges and fringes on this nineteenth-century example.
Chinese and Indians sailed the waters of Southeast Asia in the same centuries, although the intensity and directness of their respective influence varied over time and place throughout the region. Indian influence, especially in the form of Indian textiles, continued after the arrival of the Europeans, while the impact of Chinese culture became more direct with large-scale migrations from southern China to the European colonies during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
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Throughout Asia, the history of textiles largely follows the history of trade, and the strategic position of the Southeast Asian region and its bountiful natural resources attracted trade from early times. Islam has been a religious element in Southeast Asia since the twelfth century. Traders from India and Persia, and even China, along with travellers from the Middle East, spread Islam into Southeast Asia where it became a dominant political and cultural force during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.9 I have tried to establish the distinctive contributions of Islam to Southeast Asian textile art.
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European political and economic supremacy afte'r the eighteenth century affected the development of Southeast Asian textile traditions, even though the objects they traded and the symbols of power they manipulated were not always produced by Europeans themselves. Indian textiles, acquired and distributed through European trading monopolies, took on meanings and functions unique to the cultures of Southeast Asia. At the same time, certain local textile designs and techniques were influenced by European textile art. The West is still a powerful force in Southeast Asia and continues to influence textiles into the twentieth century.
TEXTILES, HISTORY, SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CHANGE
Textiles provide insights into the history of Southeast Asian societies and much of the textile history is closely tied to the conventional accounts of Southeast Asia's past. Sumptuous gold brocades and silk garments were the finest products of those Southeast Asian court centres that were the wielders of power and the patrons of the arts. Legends and court chronicles in Southeast Asia record the meetings, migrations and marriages between local rulers and the courts of India, China and the Middle East, and textiles illustrate the cultural diversity that has developed from such exchanges.
lelangit (?) canopy Peranakan Chinese people, north-coast Java, Indonesia cotton, natural dyes batik 270.0 x 255.0 cm Australian National Gallery 1984.3091
Huge batik canopies were a significant feature of ceremonies within the immigrant Chinese communities along the north coast of Java in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This example is in the rich red dyes for which the Lasem district is famous. The animal motifs, that include the central motif of the dog-lion (qilin, kilin), male and female phoenix, geese, oxen, deer, elephants and butterflies, symbolize the hopes for longevity, marital felicity, fertility and other blessings. Strewn through the field and borders are minor motifs, beribboned auspicious symbols, cloud shapes and Chinese flowers such as the lotus. Such symbols suggest the use of these large textiles at marriage festivities. While the batik's motifs closely follow Chinese models, its general design structure, with wide equal borders
