Sumba textiles

What is Sumba textiles?

Sumba is an island in eastern Indonesia, and its cloth is the work of women. They weave two main forms: the hinggi, a large ikat blanket that dresses men, and the lau, a tube skirt for women, plus narrow tiara bands for head or shoulder. The palette leans on indigo and red, with pale figures standing out against deep blue, brown or black grounds. Every cloth follows the island's shared visual rules yet still shows the hand of its maker and her village. Outside Indonesia, museums and private collectors prize these pieces as design work of the top rank. The cloth is not simply worn either: it is counted, ranked and exchanged at the island's great life events.

Where does Sumba textiles come from?

These cloths have travelled far for a long time. From the early 1900s, Dutch traders shipped them off the island, beginning a flow that continues today. Weaving now rests with a comparatively small number of women, most of them along the eastern coast, who work both for outside buyers and for exchange inside Sumba. Local ritual cloth follows its own customs, and for such use ikat was traditionally off-limits. Abroad, the fabrics were recognized early on as design work of the first order, and they now sit in major museum collections across the world alongside private holdings.

How is Sumba textiles made?

A hinggi owes its pattern to warp ikat. The weaver first stretches the warp across a frame that sets the cloth's length, then binds and dyes the yarns so the design already lives in the threads before the loom is touched. In most pieces one end answers the other, and the panel's left answers its right. Two identical panels are dyed and woven side by side, then stitched together. Since this is punishingly slow work, the designer, who is usually the weaver, lays out and dyes two cloths at once. The finest cloths end in tapestry weave. Lau skirts are woven plain, then decorated with supplementary yarns, needlework, shells and beads, sometimes ikat. Handspun yarn and indigo both lift a cloth's standing over bought thread and commercial colour.

Colours, motifs and borders

Island animals carry the imagery: horses, roosters, deer, snakes, fish and prawn. Royal cloths add birds raised for sacrifice and deer with wide antlers. Shrimp and lobster stand for rebirth, one because it swaps its old shell for a new one, the other because it can grow lost limbs back, a renewal bound up with a ruler's powers. Two images belong to Sumba alone: the mamuli, a gold jewel doubling as a rank marker, and the skull tree. Dragons taken from Chinese ceramics and lions borrowed from the Dutch coat of arms turn up as well. Lau figures appear in pale yarns over dark blue, red, brown or black grounds.

How Sumba textiles is worn

Men put on hinggi in a set of two: one cloth wraps around the hips, the other is slung across the shoulder. Women step into the lau, a finished tube pulled on as a skirt, its surface worked with embroidery, beads, shells, extra warp or weft, and occasionally tufting. Narrow cloths round out the set: a wide tiara haringgi crosses the shoulder, while a slim tiara ties at the head. Until recently, only nobles could wear the grandest red-and-indigo pieces, and such cloth appeared mainly at festivals, on nobles, their kin and their retainers.

When Sumba textiles is worn

Cloth works like money in Sumbanese ceremony. At marriage, the bride's kin, the wife-givers who hold the ritually higher side, present many finely folded textiles as the counter-gift to a bridewealth of horses, buffalo and gold. At funerals, cloths express mourning and later settle accounts for the beasts slaughtered for the rites. The man's side, the wife-takers, answers with metal, buffalo and ivory, carrying the heavier load because its standing is the lower one. Cloth also seals contracts, buys a debtor time, and passes between families as thanks. Each piece is appraised by material, workmanship and design, and can be measured against livestock.

Styles of Sumba textiles

Named sub-types give the tradition its range. Lau pahudu build their patterns from supplementary warp; lau hada gleam instead with sewn-on beads and shells, and carry a second name, pakiri mbola, which points to how they ride at the base of a basket when carried among marriage gifts. Tiara come in two widths: the broader tiara haringgi works as a shoulder cloth, while the slim sort ties round the head. Hinggi themselves vary with standing, the noble examples larger and dyed in deeper red and indigo than common cloth.

What Sumba textiles means

Sumbanese thought splits the world into male and female halves, and cloth, made by women, stands for the female side. Above both sits a Highest Being imagined as Father Sun and Mother Moon, the weaver of human life. Putting on a cloth with a creature's figure is believed to pass some of that creature's power to the wearer. Cloth also carries the island's ceremonial economy, counted and ranked beside livestock. Since Dutch export began over a century ago, the work has reached big museums abroad, and the Indonesian gallery Threads of Life has archived images of the beaded and shelled skirts.

Questions people ask about Sumba textiles

Good reading and sources

• Textiles of Sumba on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• Wikidata recordOpen data