Bead Netting and Plaiting Techniques in the Peranakan World
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BEADS: Journal of the Society of Bead Researchers Volume 28 Article 9 2016 Bead Netting and Plaiting Techniques in the Peranakan World Valerie Hector Follow this and additional works at: https://surface.syr.edu/beads Part of the Archaeological Anthropology Commons, History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology Commons, Science and Technology Studies Commons, and the Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons Repository Citation Hector, Valerie (2016). "Bead Netting and Plaiting Techniques in the Peranakan World." BEADS: Journal of the Society of Bead Researchers 28: 66-91. Available at: https://surface.syr.edu/beads/vol28/iss1/9 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by SURFACE. It has been accepted for inclusion in BEADS: Journal of the Society of Bead Researchers by an authorized editor of SURFACE. For more information, please contact [email protected]. BEAD NETTING AND PLAITING TECHNIQUES IN THE PERANAKAN WORLD Valerie Hector It has long been recognized that the Peranakan Chinese peoples oceans in mainland and island Southeast Asia to trade or, in of Southeast Asia were expert bead embroiderers. As it happens, the early Ming dynasty (1368-1644), exact imperial tribute they were also expert bead netters and plaiters. After establishing from local rulers during maritime missions lasting many a conceptual framework for discussing bead netting and plaiting months (Reid 1996:17 ff.). These contacts infused “Chinese techniques in general, this article discusses 14 pieces of Peranakan blood, wealth and technology” into the region, eventually Chinese (or Minangkabau) beadwork and various techniques. The enabling Chinese to “assume key positions in Southeast techniques likely derived not just from Europe, as early researchers Asian trade and statecraft” (Reid 1996:25-27). From the late tended to assume, but from island Southeast Asia and China as 14th or early 15th century, the Chinese apparently began to well. Knowledge of these and other needleworking techniques establish small commercial settlements in Java, Sumatra, helped Peranakan beaders devise radically new permutations, and elsewhere (Lee 2014:82; Reid 1996), while retaining some of them highly complex. Additional factors in the creation of ties to their ancestral homelands on periodic return visits, or new beading techniques are also considered. through relatives, friends, and associates. Thus, the Chinese, many of whom originated in Fujian and Guangdong provinces in south China, were already on the scene when INTRODUCTION the Portuguese, Dutch, and British arrived in Southeast Asia to assert European commercial and colonial interests. At first glance, the repertoire of Peranakan Chinese In 1619, the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oost- beadworking techniques appears to be small and static. Indische Compagnie or VOC) made Batavia (modern-day Yet, as previously published examples are re-examined and Jakarta, on the island of Java in Indonesia) the capital of additional pieces located, startling surprises come to light. what would eventually become the Netherlands Indies, This article explores some of the bead netting and plaiting comprising most of the islands of what is now Indonesia. In techniques that flourished in the Peranakan world from 1826, the British East India Company founded the British ca. 1895 to ca. 1945, on the assumption that techniques, Straits Settlements along the Straits of Malacca separating carefully interpreted, teach us things we cannot learn from what is now peninsular Malaysia from Indonesia; the early motifs, patterns, or contexts of use (Nabholz-Kartaschoff Straits Settlements included Penang, Malacca, Singapore, 2010). Techniques emerge in worlds of practice, where and Dinding in what is now Perak state, peninsular Malaysia. tradition and innovation come face to face, as makers shape materials to ever-changing ends.1 Peranakan Chinese bead Because Chinese women did not leave China in netters and plaiters shaped beads in diverse ways, using significant numbers until the late 19th century, Chinese traditional techniques common in many cultures, and men usually married native women, among them Batak, innovative techniques used nowhere else in the world. This Balinese, and Javanese (Skinner 1996:57), Bugis from study examines a small portion of an exceptional legacy, one South Sulawesi, Siamese from Kelantan, Thai-speaking that expands the world’s repertoire of beading techniques. Muslims from peninsular Malaysia (Tan 1999:49), Dayaks The remainder awaits further research. from Borneo (Heidhues 2003:26, 33-35) as well as women from coastal India, Burma, and Papua (Lee 2014:83). That so many of these women were former slaves does not matter The “Peranakan World” and “Peranakan Beadwork” for our purposes; that a few might have known how to do beadwork, an activity gendered female in much of island Since at least the Southern Song dynasty (1127-1279), Southeast Asia (Maxwell 1990:63) may be significant, Chinese peoples have been sailing to the Nanyang or southern as we shall see. Together, these Chinese men and native BEADS: Journal of the Society of Bead Researchers 28:66-91 (2016) Hector: Bead Netting and Plaiting Techniques 67 women spoke Malay and/or Chinese (including Mandarin bridal chambers (Ho 1987:13, 57). In 1989, evidence or dialects such as Cantonese, Hokkienese, Hakka, or surfaced that pieces of beadwork had been produced for sale Teochiu), practiced Malay and Chinese customs, and taught by local Chinese shops which stamped the pieces with their their dual-heritage children Chinese rituals and values. For chop marks (Cheah 2010:117; Eng-Lee 1989:78, bottom). personal or political reasons, some of the Chinese men Pioneering research by Hwei-F’en Cheah complicates converted to Islam and took Islamic wives (Lombard and the narrative still further by suggesting that a number of Salmon 1993). By the early 19th century, the creolized pieces may have been made in China, Burma, Vietnam, or descendants of these intermarriages came to be known as elsewhere, possibly to designs specified by the Peranakan Peranakan or “locally-born” (Lee 2014:90-94) in Indonesia, Chinese or their intermediaries (Cheah 2010:29, 2016). and as “Straits Chinese” in the Straits Settlements. A Malay Cheah has found the names of women who made beadwork word, peranakan was also used to refer to locally-born for sale. In the late 19th century, one of them, a resident of peoples of other nationalities as well. Herein, however, Penang, Siti Rahmah binte Haji Yahya, of Hadrhami heritage, “Peranakan” refers solely to Peranakan Chinese, including reportedly made the earliest known examples of “Peranakan the Straits Chinese, who are culturally Peranakan Chinese Chinese” bead nets and plaits using several sophisticated (Tan 1999:48). techniques (Cheah 2010:117 ff.). How she came to learn The hard-working Chinese and their offspring did well in these techniques we do not know; they began to appear European colonial port cities, adopting lucrative occupations around 1895, out of the blue, as it were. These findings have ranging from “purchasing monopolies and state tax farms” destabilized our notions of “Peranakan beadwork” (Cheah to growing and trading lucrative cash crops such as sugar; 2016). No longer can we view it as a homogeneous genre; mining and trading tin; shipping and ship chandlering; and nor can we be sure that the work was performed exclusively acting as agents or compradores for European enterprises. by women (Cheah 2010:314). Inevitably, our assumptions All the small enterprises and services in the colonial towns about where a piece was made and by whom – whether in were also run by Chinese, from the retail of sundry goods a private home by Peranakan “domesticated daughters” and to metalsmithing, carpentry, construction, and the like (Lee “dutiful wives,” meeting family needs, or for sale through 2014:95). personal contacts or a commercial workshop – inflect the histories we write. Our assumptions are all the more From 1850 to 1881, the number of immigrants from important because so few pieces of Peranakan beadwork south China to Southeast Asia swelled; in Penang, Malacca, bear the makers’ names and provenance tends to be sketchy and Singapore alone it tripled (Cheah 2010:67). Known or nonexistent; we are often reduced to guesswork (Cheah as xin ke or sinkhek (Chinese/Hokkienese: newcomer) in 2016). Malaysia and totok (Malay: pure) in Indonesia, these new immigrants – poor, rough, and often uneducated – formed As used here, the term “Peranakan beaders” refers to a communities apart from the Peranakan Chinese whose heterogeneous set of makers, first and foremost, to Nyonyas fluency in Western languages and familiarity with European in Malaysia, Indonesia, and parts of mainland Southeast colonial systems conferred wealth, social prestige, and Asia, beading at home for personal or familial use, but also to an elite material culture in which beadwork flourished, others, beading for commercial purposes, whether female or reaching its apogee during the late 19th and early 20th male, residing in Southeast Asia or China. Thus, “Peranakan centuries (Cheah 2010:61 ff.; Khoo 1996:35 ff.). The import beadwork” is a pluralistic genre, the multifaceted product into Southeast Asia of European glass and metal “seed” of intersecting lives. Perhaps this is not surprising, since beads in beautiful colors and surface finishes did much to the “Peranakan world” was a cosmopolitan, multicultural stimulate Peranakan beadwork production (Cheah 2010:31 place, geographically