It is
an old tradition for women in Nusa Tenggara weaving their family’s clothes and
sarongs. They got their skill from their ancestor for generations, even since
1500 BC. In the beginning, weaving was a sacred activity with full of religious
values on it. The weavers drew ornaments and designs on a cloth or sarong in
the hope to give power to the person who would wear it, so it could against
demon and evil spirits.
Every
single ornament and design on tenun ikat
has a certain meaning. Human design symbolizes fertility, breeding or longer
age. Animal designs such as snake symbolize underwater worlds, meanwhile
buffalo as a fertile soil and frock as a rain. The weavers also use geometrical
ornaments like circle, triangle, quadrangle, and so on. These ornaments usually
symbolize good powers to heal ill body and to drive away many diseases.
By
learning the ornaments we know that people in Nusa Tenggara want to live in
harmony. They practice balancing principles in a daily life and activities,
even when they are weaving and wearing tenun ikat or sarong. They distinguish
male from female design by using bright and dark colors, or small and big
ornaments.
There
are many kinds of tenun ikat based on their function. They are lawo
(sarong for woman), ragi (sarong for man), lesu (shawl for covering head) and songket
(black sarong for special ceremonies).
Most
of districts in Nusa Tenggara have their own design. There are hundreds, such
as Ende – Lio design and Timor’s has small ornaments, most of them are mixed of
human, animal, plant, and geometrical patterns that fill almost all the cloth.
It gives beautiful and delicate impression, even soft and calm, because there
are no contrast colors. So, if we want to identify the patterns, we must
observe it carefully.
On
the contrary, Krowe-Sikka’s and Sumba’s use big ornaments. So, the contrast is
strong and makes us easy to distinguish male from female designs, even if it
has geometrical patterns.
Manggarai
and Riung does not really have tenun ikat. However it has songket, a black
sarong with geometrical pattern on it. Songket has bright colors like bright
green, bright yellow, red, and bright purple just like grass flower colors. The
ornament is drawn into two parts: one is fulfilled a half of sarong as a men
design, the other is drawn in a certain distance with rare patterns and called
women’s.
Tenun
Buna from North Timor almost like songket, but there’s a little difference in
weaving technique. It has geometrical
ornaments with bright colour like blue or yellow.
In
the past, magical and religion values on a piece of tenun ikat were more
important than its beauty. But it spent much times and energy to make a sarong,
songket, or shawl. For example, it needed three until six months to finish a
sarong or songket; meanwhile just took a month to make a short shawl. The
weavers had to work six until eight hours a day, and seven days a week. While
working, they couldn’t do another job like caring the children or cultivating
rice fields. That’s why they worked after harvest season.
In
some regions they implemented labor division.
Tenun ikat was made only by women in villages that has unfertile soil,
such as Nggela or Sikka which located in coastal area. So that they could barter their tenun ikats
with agricultural products from fertile soil villages.
The
longest process came from coloring the yarns. To get unique and unusual colors
like dark blue, dark brown, and dark red, they used natural materials from
plants that lived in the forest. Usually they used root of mengkudu (Morinda) and tarum (Indigofera) trees. At first they spun cotton into yarns, then tied
warp thread with gebang leaf dry (Corypha utan) to create a pattern or design.
Next, dyed yarns into boiling water that be mixed with the natural dyes plant.
This process could take weeks until months. Then, they could start weaving.
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