The koepiah der Atjehers — the koepiah (skullcap) of the Atjehers — is, in F. A. Wagner’s Sierkunst in Indonesië (1949), singled out as a “stijlvolle” (stylish) example of Indonesian plaited headwear. Wagner mentions the Atjeh koepiah in the chapter “Vlechtwerk” (Plaiting), in the course of his discussion of the applications of plaiting to clothing — and especially to head-coverings. The Atjeh koepiah is paired, in Wagner’s text, with the lontar-leaf head-coverings of Roti, as the two examples that mark the range of plaited headwear across the archipelago.
The passage in Wagner
In the section on the applications of plaiting, Wagner writes: “Van de kleding zijn het vooral de hoofdbedekkingen, die van vlechtwerk zijn vervaardigd. Opmerkelijk zijn de ronde hoeden der Daya’s — de grote tanggoe —, die een gelukkige combinatie vertonen van bladwerk en fijn vlechtwerk. Elk volk heeft zijn eigen vormen en versieringen gevonden en tussen de stijlvolle koepiah der Atjehers en de van lontarblad gevlochten hoofddeksels van Roti, versierd met talrijke aanhangsels, ligt een veelheid van modellen, die een nadere beschouwing overwaard maakt.”
The Atjeh koepiah and the Roti head-covering are thus set at the two ends of a range — the stijlvolle (stylish, restrained) Atjeh koepiah at one end, the lontar-leaf head-coverings of Roti “versierd met talrijke aanhangsels” (decorated with numerous appendages) at the other. Between them lies “een veelheid van modellen” — a multitude of models — that Wagner does not enumerate but that, he says, would reward closer examination.
The koepiah and the plaiting tradition
The Atjeh koepiah is, in Wagner’s account, a product of the plaiting tradition — the same tradition that produces the Atjeh *trawang* mats and the Atjeh rotan shields. The plaiting chapter groups the Atjehers with the Minangkabauers and the Bataks as the principal Sumatran producers of fine plaiting: “Vooral op Sumatra — de Minangkabauers, de Bataks en de Atjehers leveren zeer mooi werk — en in de Riouwarchipel komt deze techniek voor.” The Atjeh koepiah is thus a Sumatran plaited headwear, distinguished within the Sumatran group by its stijlvolle form — a form that Wagner contrasts with the more elaborately decorated headwear of Roti.
The word koepiah itself (also kupiah, kopiah) is the standard Indonesian term for a man’s skullcap, and the cap is, throughout the archipelago, the headwear of Muslim men. In Atjeh, the most strongly Islamic region of Sumatra, the koepiah would have been, by the period Wagner describes, an ordinary piece of male dress; what Wagner singles out is not the wearing of the koepiah (which is common) but the stijlvolle Atjeh form of it — the plaited Atjeh koepiah as a piece of decorative art, not just a piece of clothing.
The koepiah and the Atjeh decorative signature
The Atjeh koepiah’s stijlvolle form — its stylishness, its restraint — is, in Wagner’s reading, the same decorative signature that he identifies in the anker-motief’s rounded geometry and in the plang’s single-motif austerity. The Atjeh craftsman, in plaiting as in weaving and metalwork, works with restraint: the koepiah is “stijlvol,” the anker-motief is rounded and flowing rather than angular, the plang is the only motif used in Atjeh ikat. The Atjeh koepiah is thus, in Wagner’s catalogue, the headwear counterpart of the idja’s restraint and the anker-motief’s curve — a single, stylish form, set against the more elaborately decorated headwear of other regions.
Significance
The koepiah der Atjehers is, in Wagner’s account, the principal example of Atjeh plaited headwear — a stijlvolle skullcap that stands at one end of the range of Indonesian plaited head-coverings. Its significance in the larger history of Atjehnese decorative art is that it shows the same restrained taste in plaiting that Wagner reads in the anker-motief in weaving and in the plang in ikat: the Atjeh craftsman, in headwear as in textile and metalwork, works in a single, stylish form, against the more elaborate decorative dispositions of other regions. The pairing of the Atjeh koepiah with the Roti head-covering — restraint against appendage — is, in turn, Wagner’s way of marking the Atjeh form as the restrained pole of the archipelago’s plaited headwear tradition.
See Also
- Trawang-vlechtwerk in Atjeh
- Atjeh rotan shields
- Idja
- Anker-motief
- Plang
- Atjeh women’s wide trousers
- Sierkunst in Indonesië
- Acheh
- 1949
Account from Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu
Velvet kalotjes (small caps) replacing the traditional hoofddoek, made and sold everywhere by Malay traders. The genuine Acehnese koepiah is multicolored, truncated cone-shaped; still worn by older heads and wealthy. Manufactured only in Groot-Atjeh near Koetaradja and in the Pidiësche.
Source: J. Jongejans, Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu (Baarn: Hollandia Drukkerij N.V., c. 1938), pp. 156.
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. 36.
Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu, by J. Jongejans, Oud-Resident van het Gewest Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden, with a foreword by Dr. H. Colijn (Baarn: Hollandia Drukkerij N.V., c. 1938), pp. 156.