CONTEXTEXHIBITION

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1Rongkong Toraja cere

monial cloth, tali tau

batu, Sulawesi. 0.30 x

3.35m (1'0" x 11'0")

2Sa’dan Toraja ceremo

nial loinclothpio sunghki’

(detail),Sulawesi, 0.47 x

5.55m (1'61⁄2" x 18'21⁄2")

3Sa’dan or Mamasa

Toraja ceremonial cloth,

maa’,Sulawesi, 0.41

x 1.30m (1'4" x 4'3")

4Mamasan Toraja dan

cer’sblouse, bayu pa’r

anding,Sulawesi. 0.86

x 0.50m (2'10" x 1'71⁄2")

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primary patterning achieved in the weaving itself. Fine examples of patchwork, appliqué and embroidered costume included two lyrical women’s’ blouses from different regions showing just how strong an art form this really can be 6, 7. A dancer’s blouse from Mamasa 4achieves its beauty in a magnificent parallel to the most compelling of all Bolivian weavings, the Caroma ‘Primary-Color Tunic’ in an American private collection (Adelson & Tracht, Aymara Weavings, 1983, p.59). Beadwork is often a speciality craft of local communities in Torajaland, and Keiko-san’s ceremonial hanging/ woman’s accessory, kandaure,is perhaps the oldest unrestored example I have ever encountered. A fine supplementary-weft chief’s loincloth 2 displays human and buffalo imagery in the particularly charming style specific to Toraja, most often seen on maa’. Another area of exceptional weaving explored in depth are pote, women’s funerary hoods that employ a complex system of plainweaveopenwork with inserted spiral wefts, weft-twining, tablet-weaving, and braiding. Indeed, as her research advanced, Keiko-san became fascinated by the little-known and all too often overlooked tradition of tablet-weaving. She began with the better documented weavings of the coastal Buginese, who are known for sword belts with Islamic inscriptions that sometimes make their way into the mountains to be used as talismans, even by non-Muslim Toraja people. Local production is often equally brilliant, the technique often being used to generate bi- or tri-chromatic strips, and bands used to decorate edges of ritual shirts also serve as sword belts or as straps for ceremonial bags. Traditionally made of wood or buffalo horn, but now plastic, multiple ‘cards’ have four holes through which the warps pass, while wefts are passed through sheds created by turning the cards to generate shifting patterns, often reciprocal but in some cases visible on one side only. Both exhibition and catalogue offer a penetrating examination of this virtuoso weaving technique, including many fine examples. Beyond that, Keiko-san has discovered a novel variation of double-face weave called the ‘Mamasan’ method, after the region where she found it still in use. It was especially gratifying to her when this was confirmed as a significant find by the dean of scholarship in this field, Peter Collingwood of England, whom she credits as her sensei, or master. Something I had not seen before was a stylistically related but structurally

HALI ISSUE 151139