Arts of Sumba in Global Museum Collections
Arts of Sumba in Global Museum Collections
Curated by Steven G. Alpert
Last month, Art of the Ancestors presented an outstanding array of traditional creations from groups hailing from the Island of Flores. Situated just below the western half of Flores lies one of Indonesia's southernmost and most fascinating islands, Sumba, "a land of giant tombs and silent villages" — whose artistic creations are celebrated in our gallery along with other documented masterworks from Island Southeast Asia and Indonesia.
Sumba geographically falls into the Wallacea zone, where aspects of Asian and Australian topography, flora, and fauna lend themselves to a drier climatic region. The Western half of Sumba, particularly towards the coast, tends to receive more rainfall, enough to support rice cultivation. At the same time, East Sumba, with the exception of verdant pockets, is mainly comprised of rolling savannas, rocky hillocks, and depressions in a landscape that one notable early visitor described as "everywhere dreary" (Doherty: 1891, 146).
Some of the island is presently deforested. Gorges, groves, and south-facing mountain slopes once supported trees, including precious white sandalwood. While the name 'Sumba' is mentioned in ancient Javanese manuscripts (the word is said to be related to the native word 'Humba' meaning 'the people' as opposed to outsiders), it appears for a time on European maps from the second half of the 18th century as 'Sandalwood or Sandal Wood Island". For centuries, inter-island merchants, Javanese, Chinese, Arab, and European traders sought this fabled wood and the island's other forest products, livestock, and enslaved people. It was the latter, in addition to human sacrifice, plus the endemic warfare between local big men or rajas, that were seized upon by the Dutch as rationales for the island's 'pacification' in 1901, an undertaking that was achieved by 1908.
Long before the arrival of Europeans, Sumba was under the suzerainty of the Majapahit Empire and later overlorded by the kingdoms of Bima (Sumbawa) and Goa (Sulawesi) before falling into the orbit of the VOC. While Sumba was claimed as part of the Dutch East Indies in 1866, it only became fully incorporated into the Dutch colonial administrative system in 1912-1913. By the third quarter of the 19th century, some Sumbanese elites, along with local Arabs and Chinese, began to generate significant income through the inter-island horse and cattle trade. Most of Sumba's grandest stone monuments elaborately worked gold, and their finest surviving textiles were crafted or woven during this relatively prosperous period through to the eve of the Second World War.
At the crux of the Sumbanese worldview is the presence of marapu, a compelling state where spiritual forces animate everything. In the ritual life of many traditional Indonesians, everything must have its complement. In Sumba, this is symbolized by Ina Manolo (the mother of being) and Ama Marawi (the father of creation), who, in assuming the shapes of the moon and sun, made the original ancestors of the Sumbanese. Oppositional polarities, i.e., male or female, hot and cold, night and day, life and death, etc., must be ritually brought into balance to engender a state of harmony and foster generational continuity. In Sumba, this is echoed in the speech of ritual experts (rato) that is often recited in complementary couplets. Even though the majority of Sumbanese, perhaps around 85%, have embraced Christianity or Islam, the respect for the past and traditional values endures.
This sense of local identity is also reflected in material culture, particularly in cloth, where there are creations made for life and those intended to be interred with the dead. Colorful Sumba hinggi from the eastern half of the island are widely known. These warp ikat blankets are commonly woven in pairs. One is wrapped around the waist, and the other is draped over one shoulder and worn in a manner similar to a tartan and a Scottish kilt. In former times, only aristocratic men wore such blankets. Their designs were always tied off by high-ranking women. Great Sumbanese blankets are measured by their technical precision and depth of color extracted from indigo blue and red from the root of Morinda citrofolia. The bolder, deeper, and richer the color, the better. A royal blanket may also perhaps have over-daubed areas with an applied yellow-tan stain and a beautifully tied-off edging (kabakil) that shows that a blanket has been 'birthed' and is ready to be worn. One of the finest hinggi extant is a regal 19th-century homespun example from the kings of Kanatang in east Sumba in the Dallas Museum of Art. The center depicts a royal central crest derived from Indian trade cloth, but it is the rare depiction of crocodilian figures that informs us. Crocodiles are marapu; old ones would opine, "our original ancestors" and the forebearers of kings. Favored young noblemen were once referred to as the "children of crocodiles." (Ellis: Eyes of the Ancestors: 2013, 230).
Hinggi are bold and reflect both the status and largesse of their owners. Antique blankets of excellent workmanship are, for example, stewarded in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Dallas Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Museum der Kulturen Basel, and the Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen. They depict vigilant raised-armed warriors, their horses or complement of supportive creatures standing alongside a pohon andung, a naked tree upon whose branches were once arrayed with the craniums of fallen enemies. Pohon andung were erected in the old days in the center of villages. The well-known drawing of a skull tree next to the house of the Raja of Rindi (Wijngaarden 1893) boasts sixteen skulls purposefully placed, staring out in every direction. A few early, though most likely post facto images of pohon andung taken in situ in the middle of ritual villages exist, including one taken by Dr. H. F. Tillema in 1924-1925 (RV-A440-b-144). Isolated outbreaks of head-hunting incidents persisted for at least until the 1920s.
On Sumba, there is something eternally haunting, an eerie magic where peaked roof structures rise to great heights and are surrounded by monuments honoring the deceased. A village's central plaza is generally aligned along a north-south axis and is clustered with remarkable megalithic tombs and altars. In former times, fortified corrals or villages were erected on craggy redoubts for protection that also functioned as the clan's ritual center, essential in a land that outside observers were quick to describe as 'violent' and 'lawless.' It is here that sacred objects are kept, the spirits dwell in force, and a sense of the marapu abounds. Ceremonial goods were often stored in the upper attics of these structures with platforms or enclosures bounded by four ritual posts (that are sometimes carved) and populated with hanging baskets.
Blankets and other associated apparel, along with gold ornaments, were part of protracted, lavish, and often burdensome dowry negotiations and exchanges. Sometimes hinggi were also given to commoners and presented to foreigners as tokens of esteem between two parties. Locally, only the aristocratic class could own them. With the arrival of Dutch colonial administration, and later with Indonesian independence, Sumba's caste system of ruling aristocrats (maramba), their kinsmen (kabisu), and clansman through marriage (kabihu) who lorded over commoners (kabhtu) and slaves (ata) was officially abolished. Blankets that once sported aggressive motifs reflecting the aegis of a warrior class and the totemic or geometric designs that had been associated with their particular lineage could now be tied off, dyed, woven, owned, or traded by anyone. These textiles would significantly affect Sumba's exposure to the outside world and its eventual allure as a tourist destination.
I arrived in Sumba in 1970, before it was commonly visited, and went there many times during that decade. Visiting royal houses and compounds of aristocrats, I never saw hinggi in the field of the ilk that began to enter the Dutch museum system in 1891 and continued through the era of Rev. D. K. Wielenga (1904-1921 in Sumba), of which there are presently about 100 examples in Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen. Hinggi that were not woven for commercial purposes were kept mainly for wrapping the dead and for use during elaborate funeral rituals. In West Sumba, the deceased are initially buried rather quickly, whereas they may lie in state for months or even years in East Sumba. In the 1970s, one could still be shown mummified bodies tied in a fetal position and wrapped in more than 100 hundred blankets, interspersed with beaded items and golden treasures. Perhaps this explains why early blankets were not noted, collected, or seen in the inventories of royal families during my extended visits there. Often, families lamented that they no longer possessed older blankets as they had been buried with their owners. That is not to say that all hinggi are particularly rare. Many fine hinggi were brought back to Holland or collected by diverse museums prior to the Japanese occupation of the island in 1942.
Unfortunately, there is often a rather disjunctive understanding of the dating of traditional art from Indonesia. These practices now include Indigenous textiles, as new attempts at dating in that realm remain inferential rather than evidentiary. While some Sumbanese designs may have been based on a long evolution of prototypes, the oldest woven items encountered there in the early 1970s were the ceremonial royal tubular skirts, known as lau pahudu and lau hada, some of which dated back to the second half of the 19th century.
Sumbanese aristocratic women refer to the most important skirts as being 'from the bottom of the basket,' a term that reflects their value and esteem. Presented here are two iconic figurative skirts with large spectral females depicted on lau pahudu in supplementary warp technique from the Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen's collection. Two other lau are housed in the Dallas Museum of Art. The first is a supplementary warp skirt or lau pahudu in a similar palette and technique that is, to my knowledge, highly unusual for its design and documented provenance. The central figure is a large ray-like or plaice fish being caught or connected to two female figures. This skirt was woven by the grandmother of the late Raja (Tama Umbu) Tanangoendjoe of Pau, Melolo. (See Ellis 2010: 224-227 PC: SGA). A fourth piece from an extended branch of the royal family of Rindi is a lau pahudu that combines a bold ikat panel of dancing female figures and a complex supplementary warp geometric panel that is divided by a fringe boundary of white trade beads (wonogiri). For lau hada, an early imposing configuration dominated by a male and a female figure on the red ground from the Indianapolis Museum, it is composed of finely cut nasa shells and European trade beads. Coupled with this lau hada are two others illustrated using much the same materials, both on bold, dark grounds. The first is from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and depicts a strikingly large one-eyed female figure. The interior of her ribs is exposed utilizing 'x-ray' patterning while a saurian-like creature is stroking the figure's genitalia (to increase fertility). Perpendicular to her hips are two other horse-like creatures with riders with raised hands. The other lau hada is housed in the Museum Nasional in Jakarta. It is also an outstanding old example with a hunkered saurian-like figure surrounded by upper and lower-world animals in addition to a pair of horses and riders.
While burial methods and the style of monuments are changing there, Sumba, particularly on the western part of the island, is one of the last megalithic cultures still functioning in Indonesia. Some memorial stones are said to be quite old. Traditionally, it is the goal of a son and a vaunted aristocrat to honor one's father by cutting a large block of limestone, dragging it on wooden rollers with up to four hundred cohorts, and then erecting such table-like constructions, in some instances in conjunction with intricately carved memorial stelae, clan guardian figures and altars to their forebear's eternal memory. In artistry, the work on these items supersedes Sumbanese woodcarving, which was largely relegated to architectural flourishes, house spires, a few marapu statues, or small embellishments on mostly utilitarian and personal items. One grander item: A Spinning Wheel: An Instrument, a Work of Art and a Lesson in Philosophy (G. Breguet: Arts and Cultures Magazine: 11/21/19 and Art of the Ancestors 2/25/19) is also illustrated in our Sumba gallery. It is now part of the Asian Civilisations Museum's collection in Singapore. Princess Tamu Rambu Yuliana, the former ruler of Rindi, like Raja Tananangoendjoe of Pau, never sold any of their heirloom textiles during their lifetimes. However, one day, when my late traveling companion and dear friend, Yamin Makawaru, and I were there visiting one late afternoon, Yuliana decided to let us have the royal spinning wheel. She said that no one of her ranks was high enough to marry her and that a royal blanket's yarns would not be spun again from this venerable instrument. Through a thick cloud of cigarette smoke, she also wryly but jokingly said in her queenly manner, "If I commanded you, you would have to marry me."
Honoring the dead with feasting and stone pulling is perhaps the epitome of all Sumbanese ritual preoccupations. It is here where creative energy, one's largesse, and the marapu meet. Sumba's first Dutch Controleur, Samuel Roos, described in 1872 a funeral event in Melolo in which animals were continually being slaughtered to feed visiting dignitaries until the resources of the mourning family were nearly exhausted. (Roos 1872: vol. 9, p. 41) In daily life, Sumba's ruling elite are modest. Much of what we would call beautiful or artistic, whether woven, carved, or cast, if not for one's immediate personal use or part of a clan's or ruler's treasury, was intended to be dispersed or interred with the dead during elaborate secondary burial ceremonies. To European civil servants like Samuel Roos, such displays may have seemed wasteful and capricious. However, funerals and marriages are the main events where goods and foodstuffs are distributed. Stone-pulling was not only done to please or fulfill obligations to the memory of the deceased or to glorify a clan or noble line but to reaffirm cooperative alliances where the ritual exchange of labor, food, material goods, and the binding up of relationships (debts to be called, debts to be paid) that continues to exist to this day.
The parallel between time-honored traditions and artistic fluidity in Sumba is also noteworthy. Perhaps only the Balinese have managed to maintain their older, more traditional art forms while perpetually expanding their artistic horizons to encompass the globe. The same could perhaps be said about the Sumbanese and their continual inventiveness with weaving motifs. Designs from outside Sumba were and are regularly introduced into their repertoire. From greater South and Southeast Asian geometric designs to celestial Chinese dragons to European coats of arms — to contemporary subject matter — are constantly and seamlessly being incorporated into their artistic mediums.
Aside from dynastic weaving traditions, Sumba blankets also have a long practice of being commoditized for sale. Hinggi became something of a fashion statement during the colonial period when they were commonly used as curtains, side cloths, and tablecloths in Holland. These were generally, of course, coarser weavings. Outsiders were employed, too, as Savunese and Endenese weavers, along with their Sumbanese counterparts, produced commercial Sumba blankets. However, in the case of intermarriage, some personal textiles of note were also woven. A mortuary blanket illustrated here (no. 19) was the product, in this case, of a Savunese-Sumbanese union. The old couple lived just outside of Melolo, not far from the sea. The wife, a Savunese, applied a deep palette to her creative design of turtles (tanoma) breaking waves to lay their eggs (a symbol for a long life) coupled with the repeated use of manta rays (which are appreciated as being totemic, resilient and vigilant as the guardians of the sea). The weaver recounted that she began this cloth right after the Spanish flu epidemic (which struck twice in Sumba in 1918). (See Ellis 2013: 222-223, PC SGA)
The aristocratic class's skill set and ability to create ornaments and beautiful textiles with enduring designs have never ceased. This pride of skill and renewed purpose was augmented by a combination of increased outside awareness of these textiles, particularly in the 1970s, and the arrival of travelers interested in collecting them. Combined with the efforts of Balinese art traders and local Arab and leading Chinese families in Waingapu, they filled a void by producing or encouraging the creation of older-looking textiles and other ceremonial paraphernalia by the most talented Sumbanese women. They thus played an essential role in the impetus for revival. Shops in Bali, international shows, and publications have spread this interest in what was considered a remote outlying island when I first went to Indonesia.
Like many of our readers, I have fond personal memories of Sumba. This is an island of contrasts. Sumba is a true go-to destination with a vibrant, rich culture. In closing, I am reminded of the beach at Nihiwatu. Here, I was once approached by two old timers on their ponies out hunting with barbed lances. One of them explained that two naked swimmers were not acting like humans nearby. The more grizzled of the two seriously suggested that they (the swimmers) should taste the blade of his spear to see whether or not they were ghosts. Interceding, I begged for conciliation and explained the situation to two very surprised Parisians. Later, an extraordinary hotel would be built very near to the spot of that long-ago encounter. Since the development of the Nihi Beach project, the well-being of the local population has increased. Travel and Leisure voted Nihi Sumba as the best hotel in the world in 2016 and 2017. So much has happened during the last decades. In Sumba, a deep tradition intent on holding onto essential knowledge runs parallel to and interweaves with modernity and enormous change.
— Steven G. Alpert, founder of Art of the Ancestors
Suggested Readings
System and Meaning in East Sumba Textile Design: A Study in Traditional Indonesian Art
Adams, Marie Jeanne
Cultural Report Series No. 16, Yale University, Southeast Asia Studies, 1969.The Megalithic Traditions of West Sumba
Adams, Ron; Kusumawati, Dra. Ayu; Sukendar, Haris
Simon Fraser University, 2004Messages in Stone: Statues and Sculptures from Tribal Indonesia
Barbier-Mueller Museum
Skira, 1999Decorative Arts of Sumba
Adams, Marie Jeanne; Forshee, Jil
The Pepin Press, 1999Textile Traditions of Indonesia
Kahlenberg, Mary Hunt
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1977Decorative Art in Indonesian Textiles
Langewis, Frits; Wagner, Laurens
1964Early Indonesian Textiles
Holmgren, Robert J.; Spertus, Anita E.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1989The Play of Time: Kodi Perspectives on Calendars, History, and Exchange
Hoskins, Janet
University of California Press, 1997Language, Identity, and Marginality in Indonesia: The Changing Nature of Ritual Speech on the Island of Sumba
Kuipers, Joel C.
Cambridge University Press, 1998Textiles of Southeast Asia: Tradition, Trade and Transformation
Maxwell, Robyn; Gittinger, Mattiebelle
Tuttle Publishing, 2014Power and Gold: Jewelry from Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines, from the Collection of the Barbier-Mueller Museum, Geneva
Rodgers, Susan
Prestel Pub, 1999Eyes of the Ancestors: The Arts of Island Southeast Asia at the Dallas Museum of Art
Schefold, Reimar; Alpert, Steven G.
Yale University Press, 2013
1
Man’s Ceremonial Ikat Mantle | Hinggi
The Dallas Museum of Art
Dallas, Texas
19th century
Homespun cotton
The Steven G. Alpert Collection of Indonesian Textiles
Gift of The Eugene McDermott Foundation
1983.91
2
Man’s Ceremonial Ikat Mantle | Hinggi
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
New York, New York
1900–1925
Cotton
Purchase, Seymour Fund, 1971
1971.80
3
Man’s Ceremonial Ikat Mantle | Hinggi
The Dallas Museum of Art
Dallas, Texas
19th century
Homespun cotton, natural dyes
Dallas Museum of Art, Textile Purchase Fund
1995.94
4
Woman’s Gold Earring | Mamuli
The Dallas Museum of Art
Dallas, Texas
19th century
Gold
Gift of The Nasher Foundation in honor of Patsy R. and Raymond D. Nasher
2008.66
5
Woman's Ceremonial Sarong | Lau Pahudu
Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen
The Netherlands
Before 1887
Cotton, paint
TM-A-5244
6
Woman’s Ceremonial Sarong | Lau Pahudu
Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen
The Netherlands
Before 1951
Cotton
TM-2118-16
7
Woman’s Ceremonial Sarong | Lau Pahudu
The Dallas Museum of Art
Dallas, Texas
19th century
Homespun cotton
The Steven G. Alpert Collection of Indonesian Textiles
Anonymous gift
1983.94
8
Woman’s Ceremonial Sarong | Lau Pahudu
The Dallas Museum of Art
Dallas, Texas
Late 19th century-early 20th century
Homespun cotton and beads
The Steven G. Alpert Collection of Indonesian Textiles
Gift of The Eugene McDermott Foundation
1983.95
9
Detail of a Women’s Ceremonial Sarong | Lau Hada
The Indianapolis Museum of Art
Indianapolis, Indiana
The Eliza M. and Sarah L. Niblack Collection
33.682
10
Woman's Ceremonial Skirt | Lau Hada
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
New York, New York
Cotton, nassa shells, glass beads
Gift of Anita E. Spertus and Robert J. Holmgren, in honor of Douglas Newton, 1990
1990.335.1
11
Detail of a Women’s Ceremonial Skirt | Lau Hada
Museum Nasional Indonesia
Jakarta, Indonesia
Cotton, beads
12
Funerary Statue
Museum der Kulturen Basel
Basel, Switzerland
Marl stone, glass beads
Alfred Bühler expedition in 1949
13
Ancestor Figure
Yale University Art Gallery
New Haven, Connecticut
19th century - early 20th century
Wood
Ex-collection: R. Vanderstukken, Bali; Dr. Groote & E. Deletaille, Brussels
Promised gift of Thomas Jaffe, B.A. 1971
ILE2012.30.730
14
Stone Memorial Figure
Musée du quai Branly — Jacques Chirac
Paris, France
Stone
Former collection:
Musée Barbier-Mueller
70.2001.27.584
15
Decorated Lime Container
Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen
The Netherlands
Gourd, wood stopper, carbon, glass buttons
WM-34499
16
Silver Marapu Treasure Charm
Musée du quai Branly — Jacques Chirac
Paris, France
Silver
Former collection:
Musée Barbier-Mueller
70.2001.27.607
17
Spinning Wheel
Asian Civilisations Museum
Singapore
Wood, rattan
Former collection: Anthony F. Granucci
18
Gold Crown Ornament | Tobelo
The Dallas Museum of Art
Dallas, Texas
19th century
Gold, rattan
Gift of The Nasher Foundation in honor of Patsy R. and Raymond D. Nasher
2008.65
19
Man’s Ceremonial Ikat Mantle | Hinggi
The Dallas Museum of Art
Dallas, Texas
Early 20th century
Cotton
The Steven G. Alpert Collection of Indonesian Textiles
Gift of The Eugene McDermott Foundation
1983.93
20
Woman’s Tortoise Shell Comb | Hai Kara Jangga
The Dallas Museum of Art
Dallas, Texas
Late 19th century
Turtle shell, silver
Gift of The Nasher Foundation in honor of Patsy R. and Raymond D. Nasher
2008.63
21
Beaded Headpiece | Katipa
de Young Museum FAMSF
San Francisco, California
The Laurens Hillhouse Collection
1981.84.69
All artworks and images presented in this feature are the property of the attributed museums.