De Inlandsche Kunstnijverheid in Nederlandsch-Indië — “The Indigenous Arts and Crafts in the Netherlands Indies” — is the multi-volume Dutch handbook of Indonesian crafts, by J. E. Jasper and Mas Pirngadie, that constitutes the principal scholarly source cited by Prof. T. J. Bezemer in the section of his 1933 plate-atlas that documents the Atjeh *soeasa* wrapping technique. Bezemer cites Volume IV of the work, pages 25–26, for the description of the à cire perdue casting process used by a Toba-Batak goldsmith on Noord-Sumatra, and page 65 for the description of granuleeren (granulation) — passages that frame, by analogy, the Atjeh goldsmiths’ wrapping technique that is the Atjeh-specific contribution to the same chapter.
Authors
The work was written jointly by J. E. Jasper and Mas Pirngadie. Jasper was a Dutch colonial official and ethnographer; Pirngadie was an indigenous collaborator whose title Mas (a Javanese honorific) indicates his standing in the colonial-native scholarly milieu. The collaboration was of the kind typical of Dutch colonial ethnography: a Dutch official as author of record, paired with an indigenous expert who supplied craft knowledge and technical vocabulary. The work is therefore best cited, as Bezemer cites it, under both names — J. Jasper en Mas Pirngadie — rather than under Jasper alone.
Structure and contents
The work was issued in multiple volumes, each treating a separate category of craft:
- Volume I — on a category of craft indicated by Bezemer’s reference (not specified in the passage cited for Atjeh)
- Volume II — likewise
- Volume III — likewise
- Volume IV — on gold- and silverwork (the volume cited by Bezemer for the *cire perdue* casting process and for granulation)
- Subsequent volumes — on other crafts
Bezemer’s citations in the 1933 atlas are confined to Volume IV, which is the volume on precious-metal work. The page references he gives are:
- Di. IV, blz. 25 en 26 — for the description of the à cire perdue process as practised by a Toba-Batak goldsmith on Noord-Sumatra. The passage describes the building of a clay-and-rice-bran core (de globale voorvorm, de kern), the laying-on of *rimbaga* (a wax-resin-fat compound) to form the wax model, the modelling of the relief in further rimbaga, the attachment of wax pouring-channels (giettuitjes), the coating of the wax model with dry clay powder and then with a clay-and-rice-bran paste, the melting-out of the wax, and the pouring-in of the molten metal.
- Di. IV, pag. 65 — for the description of *granuleeren* (granulation), the technique of decorating a metal surface with tiny soldered balls of precious metal, applied especially by Batak, Dyak and Timorese silversmiths.
The Atjeh goldsmithing technique, by contrast, is not described in the cited passage of Jasper and Pirngadie; Bezemer supplies it from his own observation. The relationship between Bezemer’s text and the Jasper-Pirngadie volumes is therefore that of a plate-atlas drawing selectively on a longer handbook: the handbook is the source for the technical descriptions of generic Indonesian craft processes, while Bezemer’s own text and plates supply the specifically Atjeh material.
Editions and publication
Bezemer’s citation (Di. IV, blz. 25 en 26; pag. 65) does not give a publication date for the Jasper-Pirngadie volumes. The work was, however, published in the 1910s–1920s by the Dutch colonial publishing programme in Nederlandsch-Indië, in connection with the colonial government’s interest in documenting and supporting indigenous industry. Its detailed technical descriptions — particularly the passage on cire perdue casting — became the standard reference for subsequent Dutch colonial scholarship on Indonesian metalwork, including Bezemer’s 1933 atlas and Wagner’s 1949 manual.
Significance for Atjeh
For Atjeh’s history, De Inlandsche Kunstnijverheid in Nederlandsch-Indië is significant in two ways. First, it is the immediate scholarly source for Bezemer’s technical description of the *cire perdue* casting process used on Noord-Sumatra — a process that frames, by analogy, the Atjeh goldsmiths’ alternative technique of wrapping a copper core with *spinsbek*/*soeasa* sheet rather than casting the ornament in one piece. The contrast between the Toba-Batak casting process (Jasper & Pirngadie’s description) and the Atjeh wrapping process (Bezemer’s own description) is, in fact, the principal substantive point of the Atjeh passage in the 1933 atlas: Atjeh goldsmiths chose a different technique from their Sumatran neighbours, and the choice is documented by Bezemer precisely because Jasper and Pirngadie had already documented the alternative.
Second, the work is significant as a marker of the Dutch colonial scholarly infrastructure within which Atjeh craft knowledge was produced. The collaboration of a Dutch official (Jasper) and an indigenous expert (Mas Pirngadie), under the auspices of the colonial government’s interest in indigenous industry, was the typical form of Dutch colonial craft scholarship in the late 1910s–1920s. The work’s existence — and its citation by Bezemer in 1933 — shows that Atjeh craft knowledge was, by the late colonial period, being produced and transmitted within a Dutch colonial scholarly network that included both Dutch and indigenous collaborators, and that the network’s reference points were the technical vocabularies of Indonesian craft as a whole (cire perdue, rimbaga, spinsbek, soeasa, granuleeren, filigraanwerk), rather than the specifically Atjehnese vocabularies that an Acehnese author would have used.
See Also
- Indonesische Kunstnijverheid (Bezemer 1933)
- J. E. Jasper
- Mas Pirngadie
- T. J. Bezemer
- Atjeh goldsmithing (soeasa technique)
- Rimbaga
- Spinsbek
- Cire perdue
- Granuleeren
- Filigraanwerk (Padangsche Bovenlanden)
- Noord-Sumatra
- Toba-Bataklanden
- Sierkunst in Indonesië
Source
De Inlandsche Kunstnijverheid in Nederlandsch-Indië, by J. E. Jasper en Mas Pirngadie, Vol. IV (on gold- and silverwork), pp. 25–26 (on the cire perdue casting process) and p. 65 (on granulation). Cited in T. J. Bezemer, Indonesische Kunstnijverheid (‘s-Gravenhage: ten Hagen, 1933), p. 13. Universiteitsbibliotheek Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, LS 5411.