THE UNIVERSITY OF HULL BATIK CLOTHS FROM JAMBI, SUMATRA being a Thesis submitted for the Degree of PhD in South-East Asian Studies in the University of Hull by Fiona Gordon Kerlogue, B.A., M.A. October 1997 Table of Contents Acknow ledgements I Introduction 1 ,II Iambi History 26 III The fieldwork setting (Olak Kemang village & Seberang) 48 IV Textiles in Use 65 V The Blue batiks 87 VI Characteristics of the blue cloths 102 VII Motifs in the blue cloths 118 VIII The Red Batiks 141 IX The red cloths: use, designs and motifs 169 X The calligraphy batik of Jambi 183 XI [ambi batik in context 205 Glossary References Acknowledgements I would like to thank the following people for their help, inspiration, and support: At the Centre for South East Asia Studies at the University of Hull, I would like to thank my supervisor, Lewis Hill for his guidance, good cheer, and unfailing support. Thanks are also due to Professor Michael Hitchcock for his encouragement throughout this endeavour and to Daniel Patty for his good company and his help with all things Indonesian. I extend special thanks to Judith Doyle for her patient help. In Olak Kemang, I would like to thank the family of the late Ibu Asmah, especially her daughter Ibu Azmiah who allowed me to stay in her house, as well .as Ibu Asiah, Pak Edy and Upik. Their patience in answering my constant questions is much appreciated. Special thanks are due to Supik Hassan who treated me like a daughter and helped me in my search to find examples of Jambi batik. The help of Abdul Hamid and his family, Nasir and his family, Swadia Ilanova, Gede Leha, Mbok Ma, Romlah, Fatimah, Hindun, and Yuliawati, is acknowledged with gratitude. To Ibu Ida Rahman Syukur, Mrs Eiko Kusuma, Josephine Bin and Don Harper I extend my gratitude for generously showing me their collections. I am especially ?rateful to Susan Fuller for introducing me to people who could help. I am mdebted to the [ambi Museum, especially Drs Ujang Haryadi, Drs. Eka Feriani and Soekartiningsih, for allowing me access to their collections and for their helpful advice. I would also like to thank the staff of the National Museum Jakarta for showing me the Jambi textiles in their collection. Many people in the Netherlands deserve special thanks. Rens Heringa and Ellis Mensinga first put the idea into my head to make this study, and have given me unstinting help over the years. At Tropenmuseum, Mrs Schuylenberg patiently allowed me to examine and photograph the collection twice, and Hie van Hout 's help was invaluable. Other museum curators who helped were: in Museon Den Haag, Anne Marie Boer; in Delft, Marga Schoemacher at the Museum Nusantara; in Leiden, Pieter ter Keurs, and in Rotterdam, Linda Hanssen. To all of these I am very grateful. I~ Eng~and,I was helped and encouraged by Rosemary Crill and John Guy at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Professor Anne Morrell at Manchester Metropolitan University also gave useful advice. In India, my thanks are due to Viren Pancholi, who acted as interpreter and acc~mpanied me on my expeditions; Sudarshan Khanna at the National Institute of Design, and all the textile staff and students there who contributed their ideas; and the staff at the Calico Museum of Textiles. To all of the above, I am deeply grateful. Fiona Kerlogue, October 1997 CHAPTER ONE Introduction A. The research 1. The topic I first became interested in the batik of Jambi during the period between March 1989 and January 1991 when I was working as a university lecturer in [ambi, the capital city of the province of the same name in central Sumatra. I had heard that batik was made in the area, and after some enquiries, I was able to join a batik training course run by the Pendidikan Kesejahteraan Keluarga (PKK)l in the government-sponsored training workshop in Telanaipura, the administrative area of the city. There I met Ibu Azmiah, who was the most experienced batikker there, and who lived across the river in the village of Olak Kemang. After a few weeks, she offered to teach me batik in her home, and thus I was introduced to her mother, Ibu Asmah, who had learnt batik many years before. These two women stimulated my interest in the craft and showed me many of the techniques as practised in present times. I visited their home on many occasions during 1989 and 1990. This also gave me a chance to experience life in the village at first hand, and to see the importance of textiles in [ambi social life. It was not until shortly before the end of this first stay in Jambi that I came across pieces of Jambt batik dating from before the Japanese occupation, and realised that there was a long-standing tradition of batik-making there. In December 1990 I met Ellis Mensinga and Rens Heringa, who were collecting information in preparation for an exhibition of textiles from Palembang and Jambi in Museon, Den Haag, and accompanied them on a visit to Olak Kemang. Through them I learnt of the many areas of doubt surrounding the nature and origins of batik in [ambi. In particular, it had been suggested that of the many batiks recorded as having a Iambi origin and now held in Dutch collections, those containing a red colour were now regarded by many people as having been made elsewhere. Ellis Mensinga gave me copies of some articles written about Jambi batik in the late twenties by B.M. Goslings, a curator at the Tropical Museum in Amsterdam. 1 Family Welfare Programme. 1 With the encouragement of both these women, I set about exploring the history of [ambi batik with a view to establishing its nature, characteristics, methods of manufacture and function in its social context. A central aim of the study was to establish an accurate description of batiks from Iambi which could serve as a guide to museum cataloguers. In particular I planned to clarify the position regarding the red batiks. During the course of my investigations, I came across a similar confusion surrounding a group of batiks containing Arabic calligraphy. A further purpose of the study was then to determine which, if any, of these calligraphy batiks were made in Jambi. For those which did, my intention was to discover how they fitted into the social and economic context in which they were produced. 2. Research Methodology My interest in [ambi batik had a strong diachronic element to it in that I wanted not just to study contemporary practice but also to shed light on its origins. Just as present-day production is a "revival" based on textiles kept in the community and knowledge retained by local people, the textiles kept as heirlooms by villagers and made in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century must almost certainly have grown from existing practice or have been based on imported textiles. This would have been the case not just in relation to the manufacture, but also to the use of these textiles. I knew little about the history of the area, but I wanted to have sufficient understanding of the social and political historical background in order to place my studies in context. Historical background would be useful in relation to such matters as changing patterns of trade, an understanding of social organisation during the period of the sultanate and the influence of the Dutch administration.2 It might be important to ascertain trade patterns to determine what the available sources were for imported dyestuffs and textiles and what export markets there might have been for [ambi textiles. This might shed light, for example, on how far and when Jambi might have needed to produce its own textiles to replace previous foreign imports. I also wanted to try to ascertain what eVidencethere was of the scale of local textile production in Sumatra. 2 These issues are dealth with in the next chapter. 2 Unfortunately, library research revealed that [ambi is a relatively neglected area in terms of recorded history. Sources for regions of Indonesia which were under Dutch rule for a considerable time were much more prolific, and this meant that these areas had received more attention from western historians. Indonesian historical study has also tended to focus on Java, and local history does not form part of the curriculum in the Indonesian education system. Social history is almost completely unrecorded. In their studies of Sumatra, neither Marsden (1966/1811) nor Loeb (1989/1935) make more than a passing reference to Jambi. Nevertheless, I was able to find some useful material, though it is patchy and there are considerable gaps. From the staff at Jambi Museum I obtained an unpublished manuscript on the history of Iambi by A.Mukty Nasruddin (1989).Although this is also patchy, and relies heavily on Dutch sources, it was useful from the point of view of its local interpretation of published Dutch material and from the fact that it covered the whole period from prehistory to 1989. Some information was available from archaeological records. Apart from stone inscriptions, there is no written evidence until brief Portuguese accounts from the sixteenth century. The arrival of the Dutch and the English East India Companies in the early seventeenth century meant that there is some information from that period. This is largely to do with pepper trading. Little work has been published on the manuscripts of English East India Company relating to the Iambi factories. The original documents are held in British Library, and I had to consult them at first hand.