Traude Gavin’s Borneo Ikat Textiles, Style Variations, Ethnicity, and Ancestry is a beautiful book replete with magnificent color plates documenting the author’s fieldwork. Gavin’s research included tracking down examples of a now defunct textile tradition, the warp ikat weaving once practiced by Ibanic-speaking ethnic groups in West Kalimantan. Although Gavin has a PhD in Iban ritual textiles, with a focus on work made in Sarawak, this book’s focus is on the heretofore less well documented work made across the border in West Kalimantan. Though the heart of the book is an image catalog of some 200 photographs of ikat weaving, there are other noteworthy takeaways from Gavin’s scholarship.
The author began her fieldwork in the 1990s, and completed it, following a break, by traveling to Borneo for months at a time between 2005 to 2009. From existing collections, very little was known about cloths from West Kalimantan in terms of which communities produced them and how their patterning differed from place to place. Braving the hardships of rural travel, Gavin sought out the few remaining examples of ikat textiles she could find in the geographies where ethnic groups such as the Bugau, Sebaru, Banjur, Ketungau Sesat, Desa, and Demam peoples, among others, once flourished.
Gavin’s is the only fieldwork of its kind, and given the circumstances, it is unlikely to be replicated.
The warp ikat technique involves tying the pattern into the warp, or horizontal yarns, prior to dying and weaving the cloth. “Ikat” is a Malay term meaning tie, and the Iban term for it is kebat, meaning bind or lash together. Gavin specifically studies pua’ kumbu and kain kebat pieces. Pua’ kumbu’ are large blanket sized cloths (pua’), created using a process in which the warp is wrapped to resist successive dye baths, kumbu’ means wrap or cover. Pua’ kumbu’ played a vital role during major rites honoring warriors and honoring the dead, and were owned by family groups. The main emphasis of Gavin’s study, however, is kain kebat, or skirt cloth. Worn by women on ritual occasions, they were the property of the weaver.
Gavin focuses on kain kebat because, as she writes, they are “a particularly suitable tool for exploring ethnic associations,” since their patterns were handed down for generations from family or kindred without significant change. Pua’ kumbu’ on the other hand, referenced patterns copied from older textiles, but weavers gained status and prestige through pattern innovation.
Significantly, Gavin’s is the only fieldwork of its kind, and given the circumstances, it is unlikely to be replicated. Without going into the contributing factors, in her introduction, Gavin notes there was a steep decline in traditional weaving in West Kalimantan beginning in the 1950s. Most of the works she documents were woven in the early to mid-20th century. By the 1970s through early ’80s, the practice had died out entirely. By the 1990s, the remaining pieces were being purchased by traders and dealers, with little documentation of their true origins or the people who made them. “No Western dealer or collector traveled to Kalimantan to find answers to those questions,” Gavin writes. In a short but engrossing section entitled Travel Diaries, she writes that at times she searched for days without discovering a single textile in the villages she visited.
Gavin combined her field research with extensive study and documentation of cloths in museums and private collections to achieve her stated goal for the work, which was two-fold. Her findings create a record for ethnic groups in West Kalimantan, of their own heritage of textiles, which many groups no longer possess. Secondly, they provide a tool for identifying the ethnic affiliations of specimens in museums and private collections, where the majority of these works reside today.
In Iban society, masterful weaving conferred status to women.
The book is divided into three parts: “Background”, “Field Data” and “Connections”. Gavin begins with a discussion of ethnic identity and labels, with a focus on historical and linguistic context, oral histories, and origins. Though Iban culture is linked in the popular imagination with headhunting, warp ikat weaving was also deeply woven (forgive the pun) into their cultural fabric. In Iban society, which Gavin describes as “relatively egalitarian, yet highly competitive, without hereditary leadership role or rank”, masterful weaving conferred status to women, just as headhunting did for men.
Though the earliest documented example of an Iban textile from Borneo was collected between 1846-1848 in West Kalimantan, from an Iban perspective, the weaving of ritual cloth existed since the beginning of time. In the Iban creation myth, male and female forms are brought to life by being covered in a woven blanket cloth (pua’ kumbu’) and shouted at three times. And the myth of one of the major Iban lawgivers, Sera Guntung, holds that he is descended from divine and human parents, who met after his father shot a bird that turned into a woven skirt cloth belonging to his mother.
Part Two of the book contains the field data of documented textiles, with over 200 photographs, that form the core of the study. Gavin gives background on each ethnic group’s location, history of migrations, alliances, and enmities, before going into the details of their styling. Part Three discusses issues including intermarriage, tribal skirmishes and relocations, and multi-ethnicity. In “Weaving Today”, which is also in the third section, Gavin critiques several attempts by cooperatives and agencies to “revitalize” or “safeguard” local weaving cultures. Instead of reviving local traditions, the setups, well-meaning though they may be, tend to conflate weaving traditions, creating a mash-up of patterns, or assigning false narratives to traditional patterns. Gavin warns that although there is a role to play for initiatives to support local women who wish to continue weaving, such initiatives can also “destroy or irrevocably distort the weaving practices they are trying to help.”
Coming, in the author’s words “at the tail end of weaving traditions that have endured for hundreds of years and countless generations,” Gavin’s work attempts to trace characteristic weaving styles back to their origins among their Ibanic-speaking creators. As the only extant fieldwork on the subject, it will doubtless prove invaluable to many collectors, scholars, and curators of this textile tradition. But even to a casual reader the images of these astounding textiles are a ravishing reward in their own right.