Granuleeren — granulation, the technique of decorating a metal surface with tiny soldered balls of precious metal — is the indigenous Indonesian silversmithing technique that Prof. T. J. Bezemer’s 1933 plate-atlas *Indonesische Kunstnijverheid* records under the Dutch name granuleeren and the indigenous popular name de bolletjes-niek (the “ball-technique”). The technique is documented by J. E. Jasper en Mas Pirngadie in De Inlandsche Kunstnijverheid in Nederlandsch-Indië, Vol. IV, p. 65 — the same volume that documents the *cire perdue* casting process used by the Toba-Batak goldsmiths of Noord-Sumatra — and is described by Bezemer (p. 13) as the technique “die bij Bataks, Dajaks en Timoreezen als een eenige, sterk op den voorgrond tredende versieringswijze en bij meer beschaafde volksstammen gecombineerd met de filigraanbewerking wordt toegepast” — “which among Bataks, Dyaks and Timorese is applied as a single, strongly foregrounded mode of decoration, and among more civilised tribes is combined with filigree work.”
The technique
The granulation technique, as described in the Jasper-Pirngadie passage quoted by Bezemer, involves the production of tiny metal balls (bolletjes) by melting small snippets of silver wire in a charcoal-powder bed. The Jasper-Pirngadie passage (Vol. IV, pp. 65–66) describes the process: “Kleine stukjes zilver die afgeknipt zijn van een dunnen zilveren draad worden in het fijne houtskoolpoeder gelegd waarmee een ijzeren doosje gevuld is. Men brengt nu het doosje in den oven of het vuur. De stukjes zilver smelten en blijven als bolletjes in het gloeiende houtskoolpoeder zweven, waarin zij later ook in dienzelfden vorm afkoelen en weer tot vast metaal stollen” — “Small pieces of silver that have been cut from a thin silver wire are laid in the fine charcoal powder with which a small iron box is filled. The box is then placed in the oven or the fire. The pieces of silver melt and remain as little balls floating in the glowing charcoal powder, in which they later also cool in the same form and re-solidify into solid metal.”
The molten silver, in other words, forms itself into balls by surface tension when it melts in a non-wetting medium (charcoal powder); the balls retain their shape as they cool; and the result is a quantity of tiny silver balls of approximately the same size, ready to be soldered onto a metal surface as ornament. The technique exploits the physical properties of molten metal in a non-wetting medium: surface tension pulls the molten metal into a sphere, and the charcoal powder prevents the spheres from coalescing or from sticking to the container. The resulting balls are then soldered individually or in patterns onto the surface of the ornament to be decorated.
Regional distribution
The Bezemer atlas notes that granuleeren is the technique of the Batak, Dyak and Timorese silversmiths: “die bij Bataks, Dajaks en Timoreezen als een eenige, sterk op den voorgrond tredende versieringswijze” — “which among Bataks, Dyaks and Timorese is applied as a single, strongly foregrounded mode of decoration.” The technique is, in this sense, the principal decorative technique of the three indigenous peoples named — the Bataks of Sumatra (including the Toba-Batak of Toba-Bataklanden on Noord-Sumatra), the Dyaks of Borneo, and the Timorese of Timor — and is the technique that, in Bezemer’s classification, characterises the metalwork of these “less civilised” peoples as distinct from the “more civilised” peoples (the Javanese, the Balinese, the Minangkabau of the Padangsche Bovenlanden) who combined granulation with filigree.
The Batak application of granuleeren is, in this sense, the immediate Sumatran context of the technique: the Batak silversmiths of Noord-Sumatra used granulation as their principal decorative technique, and the technique is documented in the same Jasper-Pirngadie volume (Vol. IV) that documents the *cire perdue* casting process of the Toba-Batak goldsmiths of the same region. The Batak granulation and the Toba-Batak casting are, in this sense, complementary techniques of the same regional Sumatran metalwork tradition.
The centre at Karanggeneng
Bezemer identifies a specific centre of granulation: “Een centrum van deze kunst zijn een drietal dêsa’s in de contrôle-afdeeling Karanggenêng, afd. Sidajoe der Residentie Soerabaja, waar vooral oorknoppen, armbanden en haarspelden met deze bolletjes worden versierd. Men vindt hier niet minder dan 300 goud- en zilversmeden, waarvan ongeveer de helft een groot deel van Oost-Java afreist” — “A centre of this art is a trio of désa’s in the contrôle-afdeeling Karanggeneng, afd. Sidajoe of the Residency of Soerabaja, where especially ear-knobs, arm-bands and hair-pins are decorated with these balls. One finds here no fewer than 300 gold- and silversmiths, of whom about half travel through much of East-Java.” The Karanggeneng centre is on East Java, not Sumatra; but the technique practised there is the same granuleeren that is documented for the Batak smiths. The Karanggeneng centre is, in this sense, a Javanese application of an indigenous Indonesian technique that is more characteristic of the Batak, Dyak and Timorese smiths — a marker of the cross-regional circulation of metalwork techniques in the late colonial period.
Atjeh connection
The Atjeh connection of granuleeren is indirect but specific. The technique is documented by Jasper and Pirngadie in the same volume (Vol. IV) of the Inlandsche Kunstnijverheid that documents the *cire perdue* casting process of the Toba-Batak goldsmiths of Noord-Sumatra — the same Toba-Batak casting process that is the technical frame within which the Atjeh goldsmiths’ *soeasa* wrapping technique is defined in the Bezemer atlas. The juxtaposition of the Toba-Batak cire perdue casting, the Padang filigree, the Batak-Dyak-Timorese granuleeren, and the Atjeh soeasa wrapping in the same section of the Bezemer atlas’s § H is, in this sense, a comparative juxtaposition of four regional Sumatran-and-archipelagic metalwork techniques, within which the Atjeh soeasa technique is the Atjeh-specific contribution.
The Batak application of granuleeren is also directly relevant to the Atjeh context in that the Batak lands of Noord-Sumatra are the immediate southern neighbours of Atjeh. The Batak smiths who practised granuleeren were working in the same regional Sumatran metalwork tradition as the Atjeh goldsmiths who practised soeasa wrapping, and the contrast between the two techniques is one of the regional variations within the broader Sumatran metalwork tradition. The Batak smiths used granulation as their principal decorative technique; the Atjeh smiths used wrapping as their principal technique; the Padang smiths used filigree; the Toba-Batak smiths used cire perdue casting. The four techniques together constitute the Sumatran repertoire documented in the late colonial Dutch scholarship.
Significance
For Atjeh’s history, granuleeren is significant principally as one of the regional Sumatran metalwork techniques against which the Atjeh soeasa wrapping technique is defined in the late colonial Dutch scholarship. The technique is documented in the same Jasper-Pirngadie volume as the Toba-Batak cire perdue casting process that is the immediate technical foil of the Atjeh wrapping; it is the principal decorative technique of the Batak smiths of Noord-Sumatra, the immediate southern neighbours of Atjeh; and it is one of the four regional Sumatran-and-archipelagic metalwork techniques — alongside Atjeh wrapping, Padang filigree, and Toba-Batak casting — that together constitute the late-colonial Dutch technical lexicon for Sumatran metalwork. The term granuleeren / bolletjes-niek belongs to the same technical vocabulary as rimbaga, spinsbek / soeasa, cire perdue, and filigraanwerk — a vocabulary that, taken together, is the late-colonial Dutch technical lexicon within which Atjeh metalwork is described as a regional variant.
See Also
- Atjeh goldsmithing (soeasa technique)
- Filigraanwerk (Padangsche Bovenlanden)
- Spinsbek
- Cire perdue
- Rimbaga
- Indonesische Kunstnijverheid (Bezemer 1933)
- T. J. Bezemer
- De Inlandsche Kunstnijverheid in Nederlandsch-Indië
- J. E. Jasper
- Mas Pirngadie
- Noord-Sumatra
- Toba-Bataklanden
- Borneo
- Timor
Source
De Inlandsche Kunstnijverheid in Nederlandsch-Indië, by J. E. Jasper en Mas Pirngadie, Vol. IV (on gold- and silverwork), p. 65 (describing the granuleeren / bolletjes-niek technique). Quoted in T. J. Bezemer, Indonesische Kunstnijverheid (‘s-Gravenhage: ten Hagen, 1933), p. 13. Universiteitsbibliotheek Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, LS 5411.