Tjawardi

The tjawardi — Atjehnese tjawardi, the enamelling technique — is, in F. A. Wagner’s Sierkunst in Indonesië (1949), the enamelling technique that is “vrijwel alleen in Atjeh” (almost only in Atjeh) practised, and that Wagner suggests was probably imported from China. The technique is described in the chapter “Metaalwerk” (Metalwork), under the section “Edele metalen” (Precious metals), and it is the only enamelling technique that Wagner records for the Indonesian archipelago. The Atjeh origin of the technique is, in Wagner’s reading, the principal fact about it; the Chinese origin is the second.

The passage in Wagner

In the section on precious metals, Wagner surveys the techniques by which Indonesian goldsmiths and silversmiths ornament the surfaces of their work: graveren (engraving), ciseleren (chasing), drijven (repoussé), matteren (matting), incrusteren (inlay), filigrain (filigree). He then closes the survey with a single sentence that introduces the tjawardi as a special technique, with a special regional distribution and a special origin: “Als bijzondere techniek wordt nog genoemd het emailleren, dat echter vrijwel alleen in Atjeh wordt beoefend — het z.g. tjawardi —. Waarschijnlijk is deze techniek vanuit China geïmporteerd.”

The passage is short but it carries four claims:

1. Enamelling is a bijzondere techniek — a special technique, set apart from the standard repertoire of engraving, chasing, repoussé, matting, inlay, and filigree.
2. It is practised “vrijwel alleen in Atjeh” — almost only in Atjeh. The phrase “vrijwel alleen” allows for the possibility of a few stray practitioners elsewhere, but places the technique’s home in Atjeh.
3. The Atjehnese name for the technique is tjawardi — Wagner gives the name in italics, marking it as a foreign (Atjehnese) term, and the name itself, with its -wardi ending, has an Arabic or Persian look that suggests the same west-Asian trade connections that gave Atjeh much of its Islamic vocabulary.
4. The technique is “waarschijnlijk … vanuit China geïmporteerd” — probably imported from China. Wagner hedges the claim with “waarschijnlijk” (probably), but the Chinese origin is his working hypothesis.

The technique and its Chinese connection

Wagner does not describe the tjawardi technique in detail, but enamelling, as a general technique, is the fusion of a coloured glass paste to a metal substrate by heat. The Chinese origin that Wagner proposes is plausible on two grounds: first, that Chinese cloisonné and champlevé enamelling were well developed by the period of the Atjeh sultanate’s greatest trade with China (the 15th–17th centuries), and second, that Atjeh’s position as a port of call for Chinese shipping made it a natural point of entry for Chinese craft techniques. The tjawardi would then be the Atjehnese adoption and adaptation of a Chinese enamelling tradition, transmitted through the same trade that brought Chinese silks, porcelains, and other luxuries to the Atjeh court.

The name tjawardi, however, does not look Chinese; it looks, rather, like a word of west-Asian origin, perhaps Persian or Arabic. If the technique came from China but the name came from west Asia, the tjawardi would be a marker of Atjeh’s double position — at the meeting point of the Chinese trade to the east and the Islamic trade to the west — and would thus be a particularly Atjehnese artefact, made by the convergence of two trade traditions on a single port.

Relation to other Atjeh metalwork

The tjawardi is one of the four Atjeh metalwork specialities that Wagner singles out in his chapter on metalwork, alongside the heetsen (the heat-reddening of gold), the Atjeh brass lamps, and the Atjeh silver-wire ornament. The four together place Atjeh among the principal metalworking regions of the archipelago, and the tjawardi is the most distinctive of them — the only technique that is “vrijwel alleen in Atjeh” practised, and the only one with a clear foreign origin. The tjawardi is, in this sense, the marker of Atjeh’s distinctive position in the archipelago’s metalworking map: a port technique, imported from China, named in a west-Asian tongue, and practised only in Atjeh.

Significance

The tjawardi is, in Wagner’s account, the most distinctive of the Atjeh metalwork techniques — the only enamelling technique recorded for the archipelago, practised “almost only in Atjeh,” and probably imported from China. Its significance in the larger history of Atjehnese decorative art is that it shows Atjeh as a port of technique as well as of trade: a place where a Chinese enamelling tradition could be adopted, adapted, and made so much the Atjehnese own that, by the time Wagner writes, it is practised “almost only in Atjeh.” The tjawardi is thus the metalwork counterpart of the imported silk yarn of the idja — both are markers of Atjeh’s situation in a regional trading network, and both are markers of the Atjeh craftsman’s ability to take a foreign material or technique and make it his own.

See Also

• Heetsen
• Atjeh brass lamps
• Atjeh silver-wire ornament
• Soewasa
• Sierkunst in Indonesië
• Acheh
• China
• 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), p. 142.