Indonesian textiles

Indonesia possess the greatest diversity of traditional textiles in the worl, from the colourful bark clothes of Kalimantan , irian jaya and Sulawesi, the plain weaves songket silk of Sumatra the beautiful batik from java and the rebowned ikat of eastern islands. For Indonesian, textiles reconfirm and maintain many old and hallowed associations and also aymbolizes wealth status and religious beliefs .

            This is about the symbolism of producting textile in java. The spinning and weaving of yarn were traditionally regarded as symbolic of the process of creation, and human birth in particular. Weaving was generally an exclusively female activity.

Men were permitted to participate only in the dyeing of certain colours of the thread, analoug with their role in human conception . pregnant, menstruating or sick women were excluded from the work. If a death occurred in the village , the weaving would stop at once, otherwise, the sprit of the departed would do an exact vengeance, bringing sickness upon the weaver and causing the threads to lose their strength .

            An tire language of textile develop. For example, the brown and white rahidup (patern of life) cloths of the bataks were presented to a woman of seven- month pregnant with her forst child, as ulos ni tondi ( a soul cloth ) . the sacred maa cloths of the torajans of souther Sulawesi are carefully kept in special baskets, and still considered necessary for all majorituals. Some maa are considered effective for the population of spirits and opening a powerfull cloth is said to bring immediate rainfall.

            Certain cloths, clours and mitivies were set aside for the exclusive use of kings and nobles and certainly, the all-purposes-usefull cloth is sarung or body wrap which is worn by the majority-men and women, childreb and old, the poor and the haves, throught Indonesian at any seasons .