The heetsen — Dutch heetsen, a heating technique — is, in F. A. Wagner’s Sierkunst in Indonesië (1949), the technique of colouring gold red that is “vooral op Atjeh voorkomt” (found especially in Atjeh). Wagner describes heetsen in the chapter “Metaalwerk” (Metalwork), under the section “Edele metalen” (Precious metals), in the course of his discussion of how Indonesian goldsmiths treat the precious metals. The technique is one of two regional specialities of Atjehnese goldsmithing that Wagner singles out — the other being the tjawardi enamelling technique — and it is the only technique in Wagner’s volume by which Indonesian gold is deliberately coloured red.
The passage in Wagner
In the section on precious metals, Wagner begins by noting that the Indonesian goldsmith’s appreciation of the precious metals is differently oriented from that of his Western counterpart. The Western goldsmith works gold as pure as possible, adding only so much base metal as is needed to give the gold the necessary hardness. The Indonesian goldsmith, by contrast, uses alloys in which gold is “in ruime mate met niet-edele metalen is vermengd, vooral met koper” (freely mixed with base metals, especially copper). These alloys bear the general name of soewasa. Wagner then quotes J. A. Loebèr Jr. on the principle: “dat bij dit mengen niet de geldswaarde, maar de schoonheidswaarde van het voorwerp de hoofdrol speelt” — “that in this mixing not the money-value but the beauty-value of the object plays the principal role.”
It is in this context — of a gold-working tradition in which colour, not purity, is the goal — that Wagner introduces the heetsen: “In dit verband moet ook het heetsen van goud genoemd worden, dat vooral op Atjeh voorkomt. Het is een vrij ingewikkelde techniek met het doel het goud rood te kleuren. Ook het beitsen van zilver komt voor, waardoor dit een matte tint krijgt.” The heetsen of gold and the beitsen (etching) of silver are thus paired: both are techniques by which the metal’s surface is altered — the gold reddened, the silver matted — in pursuit of a decorative effect that the unworked metal does not possess.
The technique
Wagner describes the heetsen as “een vrij ingewikkelde techniek” — a fairly complicated technique — whose goal is to colour the gold red. He does not describe the technique in detail, but the name itself (heetsen, from the Dutch heet, “hot”) indicates that heat is the agent: the gold is heated, presumably in a controlled way, to produce the red colour on its surface. The red of heetsen gold is thus a heat-induced colour — a colour produced by the action of fire on the metal, in a tradition that, Wagner notes, is found “especially in Atjeh.”
The pairing of heetsen with the alloying of soewasa is significant: both are ways of producing colour in gold, and both work against the Western principle of maximum purity. The soewasa alloy produces its colours by mixture — gold with copper, in varying proportions — while the heetsen produces its red by heat. The two techniques together constitute, in Wagner’s reading, the Atjeh goldsmith’s way of treating gold not as a precious metal to be preserved in purity, but as a decorative material to be coloured for the sake of beauty.
Relation to other Atjeh metalwork
The heetsen is one of the three Atjeh metalwork specialities that Wagner singles out in his chapter on metalwork:
- The Atjeh brass lamps — brass-gilt (messing-gietwerk) lamps “mooi gemodelleerd” (beautifully modelled)
- The Atjeh silver-wire ornament — bent silver-wire pieces and silver balls soldered onto the object
- The heetsen of gold — the heat-reddening of gold
- The tjawardi — the enamelling technique “vrijwel alleen in Atjeh” (almost only in Atjeh), probably imported from China
Together, these four specialities place Atjeh among the principal metalworking regions of the archipelago — alongside the Batak lands, the Padangse bovenlanden, Bali, and Kendari — and they show the Atjeh metalworker as a master of colour (the heetsen red, the tjawardi enamel), of form (the brass lamps), and of ornament (the silver-wire work).
Significance
The heetsen is, in Wagner’s account, the Atjeh goldsmith’s way of colouring gold red — a technique found “especially in Atjeh” and described as “fairly complicated.” Its significance in the larger history of Atjehnese decorative art is that it shows the Atjeh goldsmith working in the same spirit as the Atjeh weaver — the spirit that Wagner reads in the idja’s combination of purple, red, green, yellow, blue, white, and black, and in the anker-motief’s rounded geometry. The Atjeh craftsman, in metal as in textile, works for colour and form rather than for material purity; the heetsen red is the gold-worker’s contribution to the same decorative vocabulary that the weaver works in silk. The pairing of heetsen with tjawardi — heat-reddened gold and enameled gold, both practised “especially in Atjeh” — is, in turn, the recognition that Atjeh goldsmithing was, in the period Wagner describes, a regional craft of unusual range and refinement.
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. 136–137.