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1923.86.84

One of three cloths for making women's skirts, woven and patterned by "tie-and-dye" process. [CW 2 6 1998]

1923.86.84

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Collection type
Object
Description
One of three cloths for making women's skirts, woven and patterned by "tie-and-dye" process. [CW 2 6 1998]
Geographical reference
Malaysia
Asia > South-eastern Asia > Malaysia
Sarawak
Cultural groups
Iban
Date / Period
Date made: Before 1923
Date collected
By 1923
Acquisition information
Donated: 1923
Materials and processes
Material Textile, Material Pigment, Process Woven, Process Ikat Resist Dyed
Dimensions
Length 553 mm, Width 1080 mm
Object numbers
Accession number: 1923.86.84
Research and responses

See also two letters from Bertram Brooke which have been pasted into the front of the accessions book. [MdeA 12 6 1998]

See: Hose and McDougall, 'The Pagan Tribes of Borneo vol. I & II', London : Macmillan and Co., 1912. [CF 2/3/2001]

According to Traude Gavin, author of The Women's Warpath: Iban Ritual Fabrics from Borneo (Los Angeles: UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, 1966), the local name for this skirt should be 'Kain Kebat'. "So far, there is no recorded instance of Bidang being used by Iban weavers as a term for skirt. In Iban, Malay, Bidayuh and Indonesian, Bidang is a numeral classifier for things that are spread out flat when in use, such as mats, cloth, land, leaf matting, etc. It appears that the term Bidang for a woman's skirt was only used by British expatriates living in Sarawak, dating back to the nineteenth century (but it does not appear as a term for skirt in dictionaries compiled by resident Englishmen at the time). In the 1980s and 90s, it was for a while adopted by urban Iban and Chinese in Sarawak, probably because it had appeared in print in exhibition catalogues etc. (for more details, see Gaven, Iban Ritual Textiles, KITLV, forthcoming)". 'Kain' means cloth; 'kebat' means patterned by the ikat technique. [CF 22/7/2002]

Search terms: Textile, Clothing Textile, Specimen, Skirt

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