Day 14 - Waingapu, East Sumba

This morning we moored at Waingapu and were met again by local guide and textile workshop owner, Freddy. We were driven in several cars to his workshop where they produce beautiful ikat for hinggi and lawu. All the designs and ikat tying are done in-house, as is the morinda dyeing and weaving. The indigo is outsourced to specialised artisans.

This is Freddy and his wife at the entrance to his workshop with Davidin the background.

Freddy explained how designs are laid out, then drawn up using  blue and red pencils. The master ikat artist then starts to tie each section using a long knot and thread for the morinda ties, and a shorter thread for the indigo. It is painstaking and exacting work which can take months to complete a single piece.

Many of the staff have been with Freddy since he started his workshop about 15 years ago, and there is careful attention to detail so that each ikat is as sharp and precise as possible because they use only 6 threads per bundle instead of the usual 12 threads per bundle.

A section of tied ikat before dyeing.

I thought they might need a hand pounding the morinda roots before dyeing.....

Once the first layer of indigo has been dyed, the tied warp is soaked in water to get rid of the ash and then it is soaked in a candlenut mordant for 2 days to ensure the cotton soaks up as much as possible. The warp is then left out to hang for 3 months so that the fatty acids stick to the indigo and mordant the fabric for the morinda dyeing. Freddy's workshop dyes the warp in the morinda twice to ensure full colour penetration.

Once the warp has been fully dyed, the threads are focussed by an expert ikat maker, to ensure they have retained tension to provide the sharpest detail possible. They can then be woven by the two weavers there.

Another detailing on these fabrics is the kabokil. This border is woven once the fabric has been cut from the loom. The excess warp threads are turned to the side and are rewoven as the weft to make a decorative striped border at the top and bottom of the fabric.

We can now start to realise why these textiles take such a long time to produce and how complex the whole process is. It is only once you understand how many skills are involved in making one piece of cloth that you realise why prices deserve to be high for such quality.

Some of the many beautiful cloths for sale in Freddy's gallery.

From Freddy's workshop we took a short stroll to the neighbouring royal village of Prailiu, where many textiles, jewellery and carved goods were offered for sale. It was amusing to see the same people we saw yesterday at another harbour, and they continued to follow our every move at each stop we made, even trying to bargain with us as we pulled anchor and sailed away!

After lunch we went to  a rarely visited village where we were welcomed by ikat clad warriors on horseback. It was pretty wild and raw, and we were warned not get close to the horses as they were not well behaved. The whole village turned out for a welcome ceremony, and it was really quite different from what we had experienced before - the crowd was very vocal and boisterous and I was dreading the final dance where, as usual, we were invited to join in. It was all OK however, no complicated steps and perhaps by then the effects of chewing betel had sunk in.

We were also invited into a house which contained the bodies of two deceased family members - one was recent, and the other had been there for 15 years, just in the family living room. Because it was so dark I had to use my camera so will pist photos of this at a later date.

On our way back to the ship we stopped by a cathedral to see the statue of Christ dressed in Sumbanese ikat.

In the afternoon we set sail for the island of Rinca and in the evening it was a final night party with everyone dressing in the textiles they had bought along the way. Most of these textiles were woven to be worn, not as heirlooms, so it was not disrespectful for us to use them, in fact it was a celebration of the skills and talents of all the weavers and dyers we had seen over the past 13 days.

We all enjoyed drinks on the upper deck before gowing downstairs for a wonderful meal followed by traditional music from the crew. Still.......I was in bed by 9pm, getting some sleep before our last day on the boat and thinking about the Komodo Dragons to come....

Day 13 - Sumba

I woke up a bit later this morning and the sky was quite overcast, not much of a sunrise, but in retrospect this looks pretty spectacular. We were also joined by a pod of dolphins, lumba-lumba, to the side of the boat as we sailed towards the east coast of Sumba. We landed on the beach at Mololo and were driven by our local guide, Freddy, to the royal hamlet of Pau, where two Princesses live.

Most of the rice fields we saw on our way to Pau are owned by the King and are farmed by Suvanese slaves - yes slavery is still alive and well in Sumba and these slaves are known as papangan.  The two Princesses, Tamunambu Pakki and Tamunambu Tokung, are known for their very fine  pahikung weaving. This weaving is a supplementary warp technique which uses a white supplementary warp. The pattern defined with liddy sticks on a separate piece so that in effect the design is in front of them, like a cartoon, and the pattern is copied or transferred below.

This piece has been warped up with the top white supplementary threads. You can see the bottom indigo layer below and the pattern with the liddy sticks.

Here is another showing the weaving of the supplementary warp. The technique of ndatta is then employed, and this is the individual colouring of motifs or threads by using a brush, often a toothbrush, once it is woven.

Both Pau and nearby Rende are royal hamlets and these tombs are an integral  and very important part of life. When an aristocrat dies, the body is placed in a foetal position and wrapped in his or her finest cloth. The body is then bound with a lot of other cloths, but these do not have to be important ones. The last cloth however must be another fine cloth. The body is put in a coffin and placed in the family, home for up to several years.....right near the kitchen....! Death is an accepted part of life, and by leaving a substantial amount of time between the death and the internment of the body allows the family plenty of time to raise funds for the funeral - the calculating of how many animals will be slaughtered, raising the funds, inviting relatives, organising accommodation etc. it is as far away from the Western idea of death and burial as chalk and cheese.

Although the sacrifice of slaves when an aristocrat dies is prohibited there are stories about certain 'unfortunate accidents' that happen around these mausoleums involving the papangan that perhaps were helping to raise the large stone lids to inter the body of the deceased......

Overall we saw some gorgeous examples of woven cloths inside the Princesses house but this was done with little light and we were not allowed to take the cloths outside. It was all hush hush business so the people outside could not see what or if any cloths were being sold.

Rende was a similar village, slightly differently set up but with similar tombs and cloths. However, the Princess there wove some very fine baskets and showed us her collection.

Some of the cloths for sale around the village, employing a variety of techniques including ndatta, pahikung, ikat, mud dyeing, beading and indigo.

Two examples of Rohu Banggi, which are about 6-7m long. These were wrapped around the man's body to protect him like armour.

Textile production on Sumba is a cooperative venture - tasks are divided amongst villages for ikat tyeing, indigo dyeing, morinda dyeing and weaving. Most of the yarns we saw were commercially spun, and there were varieties in quality from those using commercial dyes, those using nautral dyes and those using a combination, especially with the ndatta cloths. It was also hard to tell whether the mud cloths were made with natural or synthetic dyes.

After a long hot day of looking at textiles we went ashore at night to have a wonderful beach barbeque that the staff of the Ombak Putih had prepared for us. Out on the dark beach, lit only by tea candles in the sand, we got to see a beautiful display of stars in the night sky with the Ombak Putih lit up and floating in the sea before us. Bliss.