Geringsing

What is Geringsing?

Geringsing is a hand-woven cloth, a tenun textile, from Tenganan Pegeringsingan, a village of the Bali Aga people in Bali. It is one of the very few cloths in the world made by double ikat: both sets of threads, warp and weft, are tied and dyed so the pattern only comes together as the cloth is woven. The weave is open and even, in a palette of red, dark brown-black and eggshell. Geringsing are treated as sacred. The name means no illness: gering is disease and sing is no, because the cloth is believed to protect the wearer from harm and to help in healing. The Tengananese wear it at every turning point of life, and it shields the village itself.

Where does Geringsing come from?

The ancestry of the cloth is uncertain. Some designs carry the clear mark of patola, the silk double ikats Gujarat wove and traded across Asia in the 16th and 17th centuries. One theory even reverses the flow: that Balinese cloths went to India and were copied there. The people of Tenganan are said to descend from the pre-Majapahit kingdom of Pejeng, and a legend says a king granted them whatever ground a man on a magical horse could ride round in one day. Geringsing appears in the poem Rangga Lawe, where the first Majapahit king, Raden Wijaya, gives his warriors sashes of it for protection in battle. The Nagarakrtagama of 1365 records geringsing curtains on King Hayam Wuruk's carriage. The first European to describe the cloth, W.O.J. Nieuwenkamp, bought two in Tabanan in 1906 for the Leiden museum and later travelled to Tenganan to find their source.

How is Geringsing made?

Cotton is spun by hand. Bundles of thread soak in water with candlenut oil and wood ash so the red dye will take, then dry in the sun. One account gives 42 days of soaking and as long again to dry; another says the whole treatment is repeated up to twelve times. The threads are then wound on frames and the pattern is tied in on both warp and weft as a resist. Indigo may not be used inside Tenganan, so the tied threads travel to neighbouring Bug-Bug for the blue dye. Back home, some ties are undone so red can be worked in over the indigo, giving the dark rust-brown the cloth is known for. Weaving sits on a narrow back-strap loom in a loose, even structure; with a pick, the weaver nudges each weft pass so both patterns align.

Colours, motifs and borders

About twenty designs are known, though not all are still woven. The colours hold steady across them: red, a rust-brown where red is dyed over indigo, an eggshell tone and a dark blue-black. Tumpal, head patterns like those on some batik, close both ends and leave a central panel. Many cloths show a mandala seen from above, radiating from a sacred centre; others, like jepun with its frangipani flower, follow patola. One group repeats vertical geometric and abstract floral motifs across the panel, another chases the pattern along the diagonal too, and a third divides the cloth with large four-pointed stars into segments holding stars, emblems, animals and wayang kulit figures.

How Geringsing is worn

Geringsing is not a saree; it is cloth for wrapping and tying. The narrowest cloths are made of fourteen patterned strips, their fringes left uncut. Boys and men wear them as tubular sashes, called sabuk tubuhan, knotted at the chest or at loin level so the fringe hangs down, or around the neck with the knot falling forward, a way of wearing called menatangkon. Women wear the narrow cloths as a kemben, a length wrapped round the body from chest to waist.

When Geringsing is worn

The cloth's protective power marks each step from one stage of life to the next. A child's first geringsing appears at the hair cutting ritual, when the cut hair is set on a folded cloth. A boy or girl entering the village youth association is carried on a geringsing on the father's right shoulder; at the initiation called teruna nyoma, candidates wear geringsing and carry a keris, a dagger, for the tooth filing, a rite all Balinese Hindus undergo. Even the candidate's pillow is wrapped in it. In marriage, gifts are laid on a geringsing cloth. In death, a hip sash of geringsing covers the deceased and a cloth arrays the palm leaf that stands for the soul at purification.

Styles of Geringsing

Seven widths have been recorded, and five of those remain in use. Designs carry names. Paparé, enjékan and battun tuung keep their motifs upright in the panel; cicempaka and cemplong repeat along the diagonal too; wayang kebo, wayan putri, patelikur isi and lubèng set large stars and semicircular segments across the cloth. Some are no longer made. And there is a modern worry: some Japanese parties have taken out copyrights on geringsing designs, and the fear is that Tenganan people could be sued for weaving patterns of their own.

What Geringsing means

Geringsing are sacred, credited with power to assist healing, even exorcism, and with keeping danger and impurity away from the village. Rules guard that power: soaking threads rest in an earthenware jar covered by a black-and-white cloth to keep spirits off, women set weaving aside while menstruating, and the loom is draped in white when work pauses. A geringsing used in a death rite is never used again and is usually sold. Copyright claims on some designs by outsiders trouble Tenganan, since the weavers themselves could be sued for weaving their own patterns.

Questions people ask about Geringsing

Good reading and sources

• Geringsing on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• More photos on Wikimedia CommonsPhotos and video
• Wikidata recordOpen data