Atjeh silk culture — the cultivation of silkworms and the reeling of silk yarn in Atjeh — is, in F. A. Wagner’s Sierkunst in Indonesië (1949), described as “waarschijnlijk al zeer oud” (probably already very old). Wagner notes the Atjeh silk culture in the chapter “Weven en ikatten” (Weaving and ikat), in the course of his discussion of the raw materials of Indonesian weaving, where he contrasts the situation in Atjeh with that of the Lampongse districten on the other side of Sumatra. The entry is short — a single clause — but it is the only passage in Wagner’s volume that explicitly identifies Atjeh as a site of silk cultivation, and it places Atjeh within a small group of Indonesian regions where silk was traditionally produced.
The passage in Wagner
In the chapter on weaving, Wagner introduces silk (zijde) as “nog een ander, bij uitstek geschikt materiaal” — “another, exceptionally suitable material” — for Indonesian weaving. He then writes: “In enkele streken van Sumatra, nl. de Lampongse districten, werd tot voor kort de zijdecultuur nog beoefend en zijden draad uit eigen gewonnen grondstof vervaardigd. In Atjeh is deze cultuur waarschijnlijk al zeer oud, doch …” — “In some regions of Sumatra, namely the Lampong districts, silk culture was still practised until recently, and silk thread was produced from home-won raw material. In Atjeh this culture is probably already very old, but …” The clause that follows (which the printed text breaks off at “doch” — “but”) turns to the modern situation, in which silk yarn is imported rather than home-produced; see Atjeh silk yarn import from Singapore and Penang.
The contrast with the Lampong districts is significant: Wagner identifies the Lampong silk culture as a still-living (or recently living) industry, while the Atjeh silk culture is identified as old — presumably older than the Lampong industry — but its present state is left unstated, the clause breaking off at “but.” What Wagner does not say is as important as what he does: the Atjeh silk culture is described as old, but not as flourishing, and the modern Atjeh weaver works with imported silk.
The silk culture and the idja
The connection between the silk culture and the idja — the Atjeh silk cloth with gold- and silver-thread decoration — is implicit in Wagner’s account. The idja is woven on a silk ground, and Wagner notes that “de weefsels van Atjeh meestal van zijde” (the weavings of Atjeh are mostly of silk). The silk of the idja’s ground is the product of a culture that Wagner describes as “waarschijnlijk al zeer oud” — and the antiquity of the silk culture is, in turn, an argument for the antiquity of the idja itself. The Atjeh weavers’ choice of silk rather than cotton — the Bataks weave in cotton, the Atjehers in silk — is, in this sense, a choice that the silk culture made possible: silk weaving in Atjeh rests on a silk culture that is older than the cloth itself.
The silk culture in the Sumatran context
Wagner identifies only two Sumatran regions where silk culture is attested: the Lampong districts (recently living) and Atjeh (probably very old). The two regions stand at opposite ends of Sumatra — Atjeh at the northern tip, the Lampong districts at the southern — and together they frame the island’s silk tradition. The Batak lands, between them, are described as cotton-weaving regions, not silk-weaving; and the great silk-weaving centres of Palembang and Banka, further south, are described by Wagner as weaving regions but not as silk-cultivating regions. The Atjeh and Lampong silk cultures are thus, in Wagner’s account, the two Sumatran sites where the raw material of silk was actually produced.
Significance
The Atjeh silk culture is, in Wagner’s account, the foundation on which the Atjeh silk-weaving tradition — the tradition of the idja, the plang in silk, the silk cloths with gold and silver — rests. Its significance in the larger history of Atjehnese decorative art is that it locates the origin of Atjeh silk weaving in an old, local silk culture, rather than in the import of silk yarn from across the Strait of Malacca. The modern situation, in which Atjeh weavers work with silk imported from Singapore and Penang, is the successor of the older situation, in which Atjeh weavers worked with silk produced at home. The break between the two — marked by Wagner’s “doch” — is the break between the old silk culture and the modern silk trade, and it is the break that places the idja in the modern period on a foundation of imported silk rather than on a foundation of home-grown silk.
See Also
- Idja
- Atjeh silk yarn import from Singapore and Penang
- Plang
- Anker-motief
- Sierkunst in Indonesië
- Acheh
- Singapore
- Penang
- 1949
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), p. 41.