The anker-motief — Dutch anker-motief, “anchor motif” — is a special variation of the sleutelfiguur (key-figure) motif that, in F. A. Wagner’s Sierkunst in Indonesië (1949), is singled out as characteristic of the decorative art (sierkunst) of the Atjehers. The motif is described as one of the distinctive ornaments of Atjehnese weaving, where it appears in the central field of the so-called idja’s — the silk cloths of Atjeh with gold- and silver-thread decoration worked in flottante inslag (floating weft) — and it reappears, in a more rounded and flowing form, in the border decorations of the same weavings. Wagner illustrates the motif in figs. 10 and 11 of his volume (p. 13) and discusses it again in the chapter on weaving (p. 56).
The motif and its derivation
Wagner places the anker-motief within the broader genealogy of Indonesian geometric ornament that he develops in the introductory chapter “Iets over ornamentiek” (Something on ornament). There he traces a family of key-figure motifs — sleutelfiguren — that arise from the combination of a haakfiguur (hook-figure) and the sleutelfiguur proper, and that combine again to produce double key-figures, rhombus-key combinations, and the cross-shaped bandji (swastika). The anker-motief of the Atjehers is described as a bijzondere variatie (“special variation”) of this same family: a key-figure that has been rounded off into anchor-shaped curves, so that the angular geometry of the underlying motif is softened into a more flowing line. Wagner writes that “de voorkeur voor de in dit motief sterk op de voorgrond tredende afgeronde vormen komt ook tot uiting in de randversieringen van weefsels, waarin de oorspronkelijk hoekige geometrische vormen tot een meer vloeiend geheel zijn verwerkt” — “the preference for the rounded forms that come strongly to the fore in this motif is also expressed in the border decorations of weavings, in which the originally angular geometric forms have been worked into a more flowing whole.”
The motif in Atjeh weaving
In the chapter “Weven en ikatten” (Weaving and ikat), Wagner returns to the anker-motief as one of the structural devices of the Atjeh silk cloths. The Atjeh weavers, he writes, apply the ikat procedure exclusively to narrow bands of the warp, and use no other motif there than the plang (arrow-point). But alongside the ikat decoration, “overvloedig gebruik gemaakt van goud- en zilverdraad” — abundant use is made of gold and silver thread. “Door middel van de flottante inslag worden de motieven ingeweven. De gevormde patronen hebben merendeels een eigen karakter, terwijl in de gebruikte motieven nog duidelijk de oorspronkelijke geometrische opbouw is terug te vinden. In het veld verschijnen z.g. ankerfiguren — variaties der sleutelfiguren —; in de randen worden afgeronde geometrische motieven verwerkt.”
The anchor figures in the field (veld) and the rounded geometric motifs in the borders (randen) thus form a single decorative system: the anker-motief in the field is the “loud” version of the same rounded-geometric taste that, in the borders, becomes a more general vocabulary of afgeronde geometrische motieven (rounded geometric motifs). The “preference for rounded forms” that Wagner identifies as the Atjehers’ distinctive accent within the broader Indonesian geometric tradition is, in this sense, expressed twice over: once in the central field, as the anchor figure itself, and once in the borders, as the diffusion of that rounded geometry across the narrower ornamental register.
Relation to other Indonesian motifs
Wagner’s discussion places the anker-motief alongside the other regional variants of the key-figure family: the pijlpunt-motief (arrow-point motif) of South Sumatra, the Batak lands, and Atjeh; the spoelmotief (bobbin motif) of Sumba; the kembang-manggis-motief of plaiting; the bandji (swastika) of Java and Bali. The anker-motief is the Atjehers’ contribution to this regional catalogue — a regional accent on a pan-Indonesian geometric foundation. Its distinctiveness lies not in the underlying geometry (which is shared) but in the rounding: the Atjeh anchor is the key-figure that has been softened into a curve, and that softening is what Wagner reads as the Atjehers’ decorative signature.
Significance
The anker-motief is, in Wagner’s account, the principal decorative signature of Atjeh silk weaving — the motif by which the idja’s of Atjeh are recognized as Atjehnese rather than as the product of some other weaving centre of Sumatra. Its significance in the larger history of Atjehnese decorative art is that it shows a regional craft tradition working, with deliberate and distinctive taste, on a geometric foundation shared across the archipelago: the Atjehers did not invent the key-figure motif, but they rounded it into an anchor, and the anchor became the sign of their weaving. The pairing of the anker-motief in the field with rounded geometric motifs in the borders is, in turn, the structural device by which the Atjeh silk cloth organises its decorative surface into a centre and a frame — a composition that Wagner reads as a “more flowing whole” than the angular geometric registers of other Sumatran weaving traditions.
See Also
Source
Sierkunst in Indonesië, by F. A. Wagner, Insulinde — Serie Handleidingen voor de Kennis van Indonesië, Vol. VI (Groningen, Batavia: J. B. Wolters’ Uitgevers-Maatschappij N.V., 1949), pp. 10–11, 13 (figs. 10–11), 56 (fig. 35).