The plang — Atjehnese plang, the Atjehnese name for the pijlpunt-motief (arrow-point motif) — is the single decorative motif that, in F. A. Wagner’s Sierkunst in Indonesië (1949), the weavers of Atjeh apply to the ikat-decorated bands of their silk cloths. Wagner describes the motif twice: first in the introductory chapter on ornament, where he names it plang and notes its presence alongside the Batak and South-Sumatran arrow-point ikat; and again in the chapter on weaving, where he explains that “het ikat-procédé wordt in Atjeh uitsluitend toegepast op smalle banen van de schering, terwijl geen ander motief wordt gebruikt dan de pijlpuntvorm, hier plang genoemd” — “the ikat procedure is applied in Atjeh exclusively to narrow bands of the warp, while no other motif is used than the arrow-point form, here called plang.” The motif is illustrated in fig. 34 of Wagner’s volume (p. 55).
The motif and its construction
The pijlpunt-motief arises, in Wagner’s account, from a deliberate shifting of the small white vlekjes (spots) that are the basic product of the most primitive ikat procedure. A continuous thread is wound into a bundle and bound at regular intervals with a short fibre; after dyeing, the bound sections remain white while the rest of the thread takes the dye, producing a coloured thread scattered with regular white spots. When such threads are set up on the warp frame, the weaver can place them so that the white spots climb in one direction and then descend in the other, producing a zig-zag of white points that read as arrow-heads — pijlpunten — across the surface of the cloth.
Wagner writes: “Men kan de draden echter óók zó op de schering plaatsen, dat de witte vlekjes in regelmatige volgorde komen te liggen. De Bataks en de Atjehers passen dit toe ter verkrijging van het z.g. pijlpuntmotief. De scheringdraden worden daartoe zó op het scheringraam aangebracht, dat de witte vlekjes in regelmatige opklimming in een bepaalde richting komen te liggen om vervolgens in tegengestelde richting af te dalen.” The motif is thus not produced by an elaborate ikat technique but by the precise placement on the warp of threads that have been ikatted in the most primitive way — a single wrap, a single dye, a regular white spot.
The motif in Atjeh
In the chapter “Weefsels en weefpatronen” (Weaves and weaving patterns), Wagner returns to the plang as the only motif of Atjeh ikat. The Atjeh weavers, he notes, work in silk where the Bataks work in cotton: “terwijl in de Bataklanden katoen het weefmateriaal vormt, zijn de weefsels van Atjeh meestal van zijde.” The plang of Atjeh is thus an arrow-point motif executed in silk — and it appears, in the Atjeh cloth, in a narrow ikat-ed band of the warp, surrounded by fields and borders of gold- and silver-thread work in flottante inslag that carry the anker-motief and its rounded geometric cognates. The plang is, in this composition, the ikat element — the dyed element — set against the metallic splendour of the idja’s gold and silver. Wagner’s fig. 34 shows “Atjeh. Op de schering geikatte doek met gouddraad doorweven in flottante inslag. In het geikatte middenveld is het plangmotief toegepast.”
Relation to the wider Sumatran arrow-point tradition
Wagner notes that the pijlpunt-motief appears in three regions of Sumatra: in South Sumatra, in the Batak lands, and in Atjeh. The motif is also formed in Pasemah (on the border of Palembang and Benkoelen) by shifting the ikatted weft thread, and appears in the Batak ragidoep in patterns of rhombus and arrow-point. The plang of Atjeh is thus a regional variant of a Sumatran arrow-point family — distinguished from the Batak version by its silk ground, and from the Pasemah version by its execution on the warp rather than the weft.
Significance
The plang is, in Wagner’s account, the ikat signature of Atjeh weaving — the single motif by which the Atjeh weavers admit the dyed thread into their silk cloths. Its significance in the larger history of Atjehnese decorative art is that it shows the Atjeh weavers working within a Sumatran arrow-point tradition, but reducing it to its most austere form: a single motif, on a narrow band of the warp, set against the metallic exuberance of the idja’s gold and silver. The restraint of the plang — one motif, one band, no others — is the counterpart, in ikat, of the restraint that Wagner reads in the anker-motief’s rounded geometry in the field: the Atjeh weavers know exactly what they are doing, and they do exactly one thing.
See Also
- Anker-motief
- Idja
- Sierkunst in Indonesië
- Acheh
- Atjeh silk culture
- Atjeh silk yarn import from Singapore and Penang
- 1949
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. 9, 44, 54–55 (fig. 34).