Beadwork from Island Southeast Asia in Global Museum Collections
Beadwork from Island Southeast Asia in Global Museum Collections
Curated by Steven G. Alpert
Beads and beadwork have always "witnessed" or played a role in ceremonial occasions in Island Southeast Asia. Their use at festive times and during rites of passage celebrations in Sarawak and throughout the Indonesian archipelago can be found on richly decorated beaded jackets, ceremonial sarongs, loincloths, crowns, hats, and various forms of headgear.
Often accompanying regalia, such as an aristocrat's beaded bag containing decorated lime containers, or other varied accoutrements used in betel nut chewing might be composed of or embellished by beads. Small containers for personal items or ritual paraphernalia were also stored in baskets and boxes that were sometimes enriched with beadwork. Items advertising one's status while invoking protection and recognition might also include beadwork, such as the beaded panels affixed to the back of some Dayak baby carriers. Beads stand out for their range of color, shape, texture, and design, as seen in necklaces, wrist strands, armbands, chokers, richly decorated chest pectorals, and as embellishments to heralded weaponry. Beadwork provided a framework for a cultural currency of value, protection, and recognition. As Victor King wrote on the Maloh, Borneo's most prolific group of beaders: "Traditionally the aristocrats (samagat) were the ruling decision makers, and the custodians of customary law (adat); village headmen or chiefs, regional chiefs or war-leaders were always samagat. Aristocrats were also a leisured class." Beadwork was made by both more egalitarian societies (like the Iban) but rose to some of its highest forms of visual sophistication when associated with multi-tiered aristocratic societies.
This month's feature celebrates exceptional antique beadwork largely from such groups. Beadwork can be embedded, strung, appliquéd, or woven using a number of techniques that include multiple vertical or horizontal thread-weaves. Thread, if it was not cotton or imported silk, was fashioned from the stringy veins of pineapple leaves or other vine-like materials in a process known as decortication. Beadwork was then further attached to cotton strands, fibrous or otherwise plaited materials.
Of all of the woven or fibrous items produced in the archipelago, beadwork is the most difficult to categorize or understand as to whether it is antique, contemporary, or copied from older pre-existing examples. To fully appreciate these sometimes subtle but always telling differentiations, one has to be acquainted with a voluminous corpus of material over an extended period of time, particularly with earlier examples that include techniques and designs that have vanished with modernity.
How a piece is constructed is important to that knowledge. The type and palette of the beads and backing material, in addition to its provenance and documentation, can help to reveal an item's age. It's a difficult arena, particularly where beading may still be part of a living culture. Pieces using modern designs or brightly colored beads present us with a fugitive indication of their age and purpose. In recent years, many beaded items have been created to sell. The best of these pieces attempt to follow older palettes, which unexpectedly ushered in an era of 'revivalism.' This was followed by a re-flowering of what were, in most cases, waning traditions. Beader's skill sets were thus really boosted in the 1990s when old beads and nassa shells were commonly being repurposed for contemporary items, particularly from Kalimantan (Borneo) and Sumba.
Since our very beginning, and that includes both modern humans and Neanderthals, rounded or oblong-shaped beads have been holed or pierced from organic materials such as shell, bone, wood, hardened tree sap, seeds, and various sea corals. Under the heading of inorganic materials, clay, ceramic, stone, metal, and, above all, glass beads were highly valued. In fact, beads are one of the oldest types of archaeological artifacts extant. The use of nassarius (Nassariidae), or pierced nassa shell beads, is said to date back some 100,000 years and is thought to be the world's oldest known jewelry component. Five of the items illustrated here, including a Maloh Dayak jacket, a small Lampung box, a Flores lawo butu, and two other royal skirts from East Sumba utilize these same small pierced white shells. The latter sarong is an impressive and rare red lau hada from East Sumba that was deposited in the Indianapolis Museum of Art in 1933. One can posit that humankind has always had a strong and lasting affinity with materials that can be formed into beads or pierced pendants.
In Indonesia, the universal appeal of beads is reflected in their association with Prehistoric, Bronze Age, and Iron Age burial sites. During the Classical period and onwards, beads were used in prayer strands (mala beads) as well as worn as adornments as seen on numerous figurative reliefs, i.e., the cladding on central Java's Borobudur temple (8th/9th century). Glass beads also have a long history in Southeast Asia dating back some 3,000 years to the region's Iron Age. "Glass is made up of quartz in a sandy form (silica), alkali (soda, potash, sometimes lead) and lime. Glass is colored, cobalt for blue, iron for green, copper for red, uranium for yellow and manganese for purple". (Sumarah Adhyatman) Wherever glass beads were initially made, they were traded. Beads from as far-flung as the Roman Empire, Africa, India, China, South East Asia, and those manufactured within Indonesia over centuries were spread throughout the archipelago. Little of the origin and distribution of beads is well understood, nor has the subject of distribution been well-studied. Other than the so-called opaque burnt orange colored muitsalah bead, said to be from India from the 16th century or earlier, and the previously mentioned items utilizing ground nassa shells, most of the beadwork illustrated here is composed of trade beads of European origin from the 19th-early 20th century.
Much of Indonesia's best beadwork is pictorial in its messaging, whether humanoid or mythical creatures are depicted. Those symbols were in more traditional times, largely under the purveyance of aristocrats. Women who possessed the technical skill and the ability to navigate natural and supernatural realms for themselves, their families, and menfolk created some of the items illustrated below. In some cultures, and this is particularly true, for example, in Sumba, the motifs seen on beadwork are often quite similar to those found in the local repertoire of designs used in weaving cotton cloth. In some traditions, and as far ranging as Enggano to Papua, figurative beaded designs are not necessarily only related to a weaving tradition but provide complimentary memes to those found in the wood carvings of men.
The Textile Museum's high-ranking Kayan man's jacket, with its ambit of stacked figures, along with a related piece from the British Museum, are good examples of a style of Borneo jacket that is no longer made. Jackets of this type were collected by Charles Hose on the Baram River in Sarawak in 1905. On the other hand, one piece that has been included for its longevity of manufacture is an antique example of a Maloh beaded skirt. This pattern is common and still being made. On older skirts and jackets, one can often note, for lack of a better term, a harmonious yet intense palette in terms of the connectivity of color within an overall design. Colors on older beadwork are often visually congenial and almost seem to glow conspicuously as if made before the introduction of incandescent light. The stitching techniques and fine trade cloth trim also assist us in better understanding the age of this particular jacket. It is most likely a pre-war piece that may date back to the late 19th century.
Of great rarity in this feature's array of beadwork are two 19th-century hip girdles or wide belts from Enggano ending with the depiction of a splayed human figure. These were once part of the stunning regalia worn by the highest-ranking women during the kaleak baba, or harvest feast. Like the crouched wooden figures atop their ceremonial headgear (see our Enggano Gallery), these figures are said to represent defeated enemies. In most cases, figurative representations are ancestral figures or anthropomorphized spirits, but in other depictions, as in these belts or some Dayak beadwork, the figures represent captives. Not unlike enslaved people from the Viking era or "thralls," these were often prisoners of war, people in debt, or the descendants of a slave class, who were sometimes sacrificed to ease a new structure as it settled or dispatched during important rites of passage events. In pre-modern times, such colorful designs reinforced even broadcast elite status and the beauty of the nobility. It can be said that beadwork with figural designs was more than decorative, as they were worn when auguring for ancestral guidance, continuity, martial success, fecundity, and abundant harvests.
Perhaps the best examples of literal "conveyances" to another state are the two-beaded tampan maju. Maju in Bahasa Indonesia means to 'proceed.' In Lampung, a girl is granted the status of maju when she becomes a married woman (See Eyes of the Ancestors, de Jonge: page 89, pages 80-115 for an engaging article on Lampung). While cotton cloth from this region is ubiquitous, these beaded pieces are extremely uncommon. One example is from the Tropenmuseum, and the other is from Museum Nasional Jakarta. They were both collected in the 19th century. The tampan maju's central creature is akin to a vessel or ship. It also recalls the large wooden conveyances on wheels with stern and prow carvings that would be pulled to celebrate a marriage couple or dragged for a person whose status and titles were being raised.
While beads appear individually as accents or, most commonly, as insets serving as eyes for statues, there are some creations where the inclusion of beads makes a world of difference to the item's visual impact and appeal. One such item, now in the Indo-Pacific collection at the Yale University Art Gallery, could have been a charm or perhaps a ritual handle. It's from central Borneo and consists of a floating constellation of beads, in addition to two bulging blue bead eyes, set into a resinous material molded over a tarsier's skull replete with bared teeth.
Another use of blended materials is the finest example of a necklace with anthropomorphic pendants extant from the island of Kisar. The area above the gold section of the necklace is gorgeously purposed with many translucent beads of a type that were once highly prized and said to come from China. The southern Moluccas were part of a vast trade network that predates the arrival of Europeans into the area in the 16th and 17th centuries. One of the more intriguing finds in the realm of beadwork that is stewarded in the public domain is a yellow beaded jacket with neat geometric designs and seven bent-kneed raised-armed figures. It derives from the Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen. Notes say that it was collected in Roti and entered the museum system there prior to 1878. The piece is clearly of Kisar manufacture, and how it made its way to Roti is one of those delightful mysteries one encounters along the way on a voyage of discovery.
As currency and as items of perceived beauty, beads invite armchair adventure. We encourage our readers to enjoy further exploring the material in our galleries that has been gleaned from more than forty-eight museums that geographically span Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America.
— Steven G. Alpert, founder of Art of the Ancestors
1
Beaded Warrior’s Jacket
National Museums of Scotland
Edinburgh, Scotland
Sarawak, Borneo
Iban peoples
Previously Hose Collection
A.1906.112
2
Beadwork Panels | Tap Hawat
Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen
Leiden, Netherlands
Kalimantan, Borneo
Bahau peoples
Collected by Nieuwenhuis
RV-1308-432
3
Beaded Warrior’s Jacket | Kalambi
The George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum
Washington, D.C.
Kalimantan, Borneo
Museum purchase
1963.19.4.
4
Beaded Cap
The British Museum
London, England
Borneo
Kenyah or Kayan peoples
Purchased from Dr. Charles Hose in 1908
As1908,0625.1
5
Women’s Ceremonial Jacket | Sape Buri
The Dallas Museum of Art
Dallas, Texas
Kalimantan, Borneo
Maloh peoples
The Steven G. Alpert Collection of Indonesian Textiles, Gift of The Eugene McDermott Foundation
1983.140
6
Tarsier Skull Sword Hilt
Yale University Art Gallery
New Haven, Connecticut
Borneo
First known collector: Tilburg Mission, 1924-1926
Ex-collection: E. Deletaille, Brussels; Tilburg Mission, Tilburg Netherlands
Promised gift of Thomas Jaffe, B.A. 1971
ILE2012.30.320
7
Beaded Baby Carrier
Penn Museum
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Sarawak, Borneo
Kayan peoples
Gift of Dr. William H. Furness 3rd., 1898
P628
8
Beaded Skirt | Kain Manik
The Dallas Museum of Art
Dallas, Texas
Kalimantan, Borneo
Maloh peoples
The Steven G. Alpert Collection of Indonesian Textiles, Gift of The Eugene McDermott Foundation
1983.142
9
Ceremonial Women’s Belt
Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen
Leiden, Netherlands
Enggano
RV-370-3022
10
Ceremonial Women’s Belt
Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen
Leiden, Netherlands
Enggano
RV-135-10
11
Beaded Wedding Jacket | Baju Omon
Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen
Leiden, Netherlands
Batak, North Sumatra
Angkola peoples
WM-2537
12
Beaded Ceremonial Mat | Tampan Maju
Museum Nasional Indonesia
Jakarta, Indonesia
Lampung, South Sumatra
577
13
Beaded Ceremonial Banner Cloth | Palepai Maju
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
New York City, New York
Lampung, South Sumatra
Gift of Anita E. Spertus and Robert J. Holmgren, in honor of Douglas Newton, 1990
1990.335.28
14
Beaded Ceremonial Cloth | Tampan Maju
Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen
Leiden, Netherlands
Lampung, South Sumatra
TM-1772-497
15
Beaded Ceremonial Cloth | Tampan Maju
National Gallery of Australia
Canberra, Australia
Lampung, South Sumatra
Paminggir peoples
Acquired through gift and purchase from the Collection of Robert J Holmgren and Anita E Spertus, New York, 2000
2000.761
16
Woman's Ceremonial Sarong | Lawo Buto
The Dallas Museum of Art
Dallas, Texas
Flores
Ngada peoples
The Steven G. Alpert Collection of Indonesian Textiles,
Gift of The Eugene McDermott Foundation
1990.205
17
Detail of a Women’s Ceremonial Sarong | Lau Hada
The Indianapolis Museum of Art
Indianapolis, Indiana
Sumba
The Eliza M. and Sarah L. Niblack Collection
33.682
18
Beaded Headpiece | Katipa
de Young Museum FAMSF
San Francisco, California
Sumba
The Laurens Hillhouse Collection
1981.84.69
19
Detail of a Women’s Ceremonial Skirt | Lau Hada
Museum Nasional Indonesia
Jakarta, Indonesia
Sumba
20
Beaded Betel Nut Bag | Kalimbut Hada
The Dallas Museum of Art
Dallas, Texas
Sumba
The Steven G. Alpert Collection of Indonesian Textiles, Gift of The Eugene McDermott Foundation
1983.99
21
Beaded Vest
Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen
Leiden, Netherlands
Roti Island (possibly created in Kisar)
RV-300-1749
22
Gold and Trade Bead Necklace
The Dallas Museum of Art
Dallas, Texas
Kisar, Maluku
Gift of The Nasher Foundation in honor of Patsy R. and Raymond D. Nasher
2008.72
23
Beaded Dancing Apron
National Gallery of Australia
Canberra, Australia
West Papua New Guinea
86.2456
All artworks and images presented in this feature are the property of the attributed museums.