The Atjeh sirih-schotel — the Atjeh betel-tray — was a ceremonial tray from Atjeh used for the serving of sirih (betel), recorded as plate 172 of Prof. T. J. Bezemer’s *Indonesische Kunstnijverheid* (1933) under the four-language caption “Sirih-schotel en etensblad. Atjeh, Sumatra” / “Plate for sirih and Tray. Acheh, Sumatra” / “Plat pour sirih et plateau. Atcheh, Sumatra” / “Sirih-Schüssel und Platte. Atjeh, Sumatra”. The sirih-tray was an item of personal and ceremonial use across the Malay-Indonesian world; the Atjeh version is documented in the colonial craft-survey alongside trays from other parts of Sumatra, and is the principal Dutch photographic documentation of an Atjeh sirih-set in the late colonial period.
The plate and its four-language caption
Plate 172 of the Bezemer atlas (p. 124) is captioned, in the four-language convention of the atlas, as follows:
- Dutch: Sirih-schotel en etensblad. Atjeh, Sumatra. — “Sirih-dish and food-tray. Atjeh, Sumatra.”
- English: Plate for sirih and Tray. Acheh, Sumatra.
- French: Plat pour sirih et plateau. Atcheh, Sumatra. — “Dish for sirih and tray. Atcheh, Sumatra.”
- German: Sirih-Schüssel und Platte. Atjeh, Sumatra. — “Sirih-bowl and plate. Atjeh, Sumatra.”
The four-language caption identifies the object as a sirih-schotel en etensblad — a sirih-dish (the dish for the sirih or betel-quid preparation) together with a food-tray. The combination of the two objects in a single plate suggests that they form a matched set: the sirih-dish for the betel-chewing equipment, and the food-tray for the serving of food. Both objects are, in the four-language caption, identified as of Atjeh origin — making plate 172 the sole Atjeh-specific entry in the atlas’s brasswork chapter.
The neighbouring entry (plate 173) records a sirih-schaal (sirih-dish) from Midden-Sumatra (Central Sumatra), indicating that the catalogue grouped Atjeh and Central Sumatran sirih-receptacles together for comparison. The juxtaposition is comparative: the Atjeh and the Central Sumatran sirih-ware are shown side by side, as regional variants of the broader Sumatran sirih-ware tradition.
The sirih ceremony
The chewing of sirih (betel) — a preparation of betel leaf, areca nut (pinang), slaked lime (kalk), and other ingredients — was (and remains) a fundamental ceremonial and social practice across the Malay-Indonesian world. The offering of sirih to a guest was the standard act of hospitality; the receiving of sirih from a host’s own receptacle was a mark of supreme favour. The sirih-schotel — the tray on which the sirih preparation was offered — was thus both a personal object and a ceremonial one.
The ceremonial significance of sirih at the Atjeh court is well documented. In the audience of 1 July 1641 the Sultana offered Commissaris Soury her own golden beteldoos (betel-box) to prepare a sirih-quid, while the other gentlemen used a silver box. The Dutchmen sat shoeless in Atjeh dress chewing sirih “tot eer en voordeel van de Edele Compagnie” — to the honour and profit of the Honourable Company. The sirih-schotel of plate 172 is the material object of the same ceremonial practice — the tray on which the sirih was offered.
In Atjeh, the sirih-complex had an additional religious and social significance: the offering of sirih was, in Atjehnese customary practice (adat), a near-obligatory gesture of hospitality and respect, and the sirih-equipment was a prominent item of household display. The Atjeh sirih-bowl and food-tray of plate 172 are, in this sense, both practical equipment for sirih-chewing and ritual equipment for the social display of sirih-hospitality.
Atjeh place in the brasswork chapter (§ F)
Plate 172 appears in the brasswork chapter (§ F. Koperwerk) of the Bezemer atlas’s Inleiding (p. 11) and in the plates of brasswork-objects (plates 146–181, pp. 110–128). The chapter describes the à cire perdue casting process used for Indonesian brasswork — a process in which the object is modelled in wax, the wax model is enclosed in a clay-and-sand mould, the wax is melted out, and molten brass (an alloy of copper and zinc) is poured in to replace it. The brassware of the archipelago was, in Bezemer’s account, produced principally on Java, on Bali, and in the Sumatran centres (the Padangsche Bovenlanden, Central Sumatra, and Atjeh). The Atjeh brassware of plate 172 is the Atjeh regional variant of the broader Sumatran brass-casting tradition.
The choice of brass as the material — rather than the silver more common in the Padangsche Bovenlanden (see filigraanwerk) — reflects the broader Atjeh practice of brass-casting, of which the Atjeh brass lamps documented by Wagner are the principal example. The juxtaposition of the Atjeh sirih-bowl and tray (plate 172) with the Central Sumatran sirih-bowl (plate 173) on the same page-spread of the atlas places the Atjeh and the Central Sumatran sirih-ware side by side, as regional variants of the broader Sumatran sirih-ware tradition.
Provenance: the Rijks Ethnographisch Museum, Leiden
The Verzameling / Collection / Sammlung appendix to the Bezemer atlas (pp. 169–170) records that plate 172 is among the plates whose photographs were supplied by the ‘s Rijks Ethn. Museum at Leiden — the National Ethnographic Museum of the Netherlands, the principal Dutch ethnographic museum alongside the Koloniaal Instituut’s Afd. Volkenkunde in Amsterdam. The Atjeh sirih-bowl and food-tray were therefore part of the Leiden museum’s Atjeh collection in 1933, rather than of the Koloniaal Instituut’s collection. The Leiden museum had, like the Koloniaal Instituut, built up its Atjeh collection through half a century of Dutch colonial collecting in Atjeh; the Bezemer atlas draws on both collections, and the assignment of the Atjeh sirih-ware to the Leiden museum rather than to the Koloniaal Instituut reflects the institutional division of Atjeh material between the two principal Dutch ethnographic repositories.
Atjeh craft context
The Atjeh sirih-schotel is one of several Atjeh craft items documented in the *Indonesische Kunstnijverheid* alongside the Atjeh loom (plate 62), the Atjeh silk ikat tissues (plates 65–66), and the Atjeh goldsmithing traditions. Together these items document a diversified craft tradition at Atjeh — woodwork, weaving, and metalwork — that is consistent with the sultanate’s standing as a major commercial and political centre of northern Sumatra.
Significance
For Atjeh’s history, the sirih-schotel is the material object of the sultanate’s ceremonial hospitality — the tray on which sirih was offered to guests at the court and in the houses of its nobles. The Bezemer plate of 1933 documents the existence of a distinctively Atjeh version of the sirih-schotel at the moment of European colonial cataloguing, and connects the material craft tradition of the sultanate to the ceremonial practice of sirih-offering that was a central act of Atjeh court ritual, as the Soury embassy record of 1641 richly attests. The plate also preserves, in 1933, a photographic record of a specific historical object — an Atjeh sirih-bowl and food-tray held by the Rijks Ethnographisch Museum at Leiden — at the moment of its fullest late-colonial documentation.
See Also
- Acheh
- Indonesische Kunstnijverheid (Bezemer 1933)
- T. J. Bezemer
- Atjeh goldsmithing (soeasa technique)
- Atjeh silk ikat weaving
- Atjeh weefgetouw
- Atjeh brass lamps
- Cire perdue
- Filigraanwerk (Padangsche Bovenlanden)
- Adat
- Atjehsche peper- en pinanghasil
- Atjehsche ambassade ceremony (1 July 1641)
- Sultana of Atjeh (1641)
- Pieter Soury’s mission to Atjeh (1641)
- Sumatra
- Padangsche Bovenlanden
- Leiden
- 1641
- 1933
Sources
Indonesische Kunstnijverheid. Platen-Atlas met Inleiding van Prof. T. J. Bezemer (‘s-Gravenhage: N.V. tot Exploitatie van het Maandblad “Nederl-Indië, Oud en Nieuw”; ten Hagen’s Drukkerij en Uitgeversmaatschappij N.V., 15 October 1933), plate 172 (p. 124) and Verzameling appendix (p. 170). Universiteitsbibliotheek Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, LS 5411.
For the ceremonial of sirih at the Atjeh court: Tijdens de O.I. Compagnie, by Dr. E. C. Godee Molsbergen (Amsterdam: N.V. Swets & Zeitlinger, 1932), chapter XI (“Atjehsche ambassade. Inlandsche feesten. Maagden als losprijs”), pp. 39–43.