Trawang-vlechtwerk in Atjeh — the trawang plaiting of Atjeh — is the open-work plaiting technique that, in F. A. Wagner’s Sierkunst in Indonesië (1949), is singled out as one of the finest products of Atjehnese decorative art (sierkunst). Wagner describes trawang as a way of ornamenting plaiting “waarbij geen vreemde hulpmiddelen als verfstoffen worden toegepast” — “in which no foreign aids such as dyes are applied” — and he groups the Atjeh product with the trawang of the Padangse bovenlanden (Padang highlands) as the equal of anything in the plaiting of the archipelago: “het als fijn kantwerk opengewerkte trawangwerk der Padangse bovenlanden en Atjeh.” The Atjeh trawang mat is illustrated in fig. 24 of Wagner’s volume (p. 32).
The trawang technique
Wagner describes the trawang technique in the chapter “Vlechtwerk” (Plaiting). The weaver works in pandan — the pandanus leaf — and plaiting with the éénslag (single-stroke) diagonal two-direction method. The decoration arises not from any difference of material or colour, but from the systematic folding-over of the plaiting strips during the work: “de vlechtreppen worden tijdens het vlechten systematisch omgevouwen, waardoor de vlechtrichting telkens onder een bepaalde hoek verandert. Hierdoor ontstaan gevarieerde openingen, die aan het vlechtwerk het aanzien geven van grof kantwerk.” The plaiting direction changes at a fixed angle at each fold, and the openings that result give the mat the appearance of coarse lace — grof kantwerk.
The technique is, Wagner suggests, possibly a very old one: “Mogelijk is dit trawangwerk reeds een lang bestaande techniek; immers, men had geen gekleurde vlechtreppen nodig om tot decoratieve versiering te komen. Het verven van het toegepaste vlechtmateriaal, zodanig, dat tengevolge van het vlechten de deklaag niet beschadigd werd, is namelijk verre van eenvoudig.” The trawang technique, in other words, achieves decoration without dye — and dye, on plaiting material, is difficult — so the trawang may well be a survival from a period before dyeing was practised at all.
The Atjeh trawang mat
Wagner’s fig. 24 is captioned “Atjeh. Gevlochten mat, versierd met trawang-werk” — “Atjeh. Plaited mat, decorated with trawang work.” The mat is one of the two trawang illustrations in the chapter (the other, fig. 23, is a Gajo-land example with supplementary dark decoration), and it stands as Wagner’s principal illustration of the trawang technique in its pure, undyed, purely fold-formed aspect. The mat is paired in the text with the trawang of the Padangse bovenlanden: together they constitute the high-water mark of the technique in the archipelago. “De verfijnde rotan- en bamboematten der Daya’s in natuurkleur en rood (zie fig. 25), het als fijn kantwerk opengewerkte trawangwerk der Padangse bovenlanden en Atjeh (zie fig. 23 en 24), de kleurige matten der Oostelijke eilanden in oranje, zwart en natuurtint en het veelkleurige vlechtwerk van Celebes, om maar hierbij te blijven, zijn wel onderling sterk onderscheiden, maar elk getuigende van een eigen schoonheid.”
The wider distribution of trawang
Wagner records that trawang plaiting is found “vooral op Sumatra — de Minangkabauers, de Bataks en de Atjehers leveren zeer mooi werk — en in de Riouwarchipel komt deze techniek voor, doch ook op Borneo, Celebes tot zelfs op Nieuw Guinea.” The Atjeh product is thus one of several regional trawang traditions, distinguished within the Sumatran group by its purity — the Atjeh mat of fig. 24 is illustrated without the supplementary dark strips that appear on the Gajo-land example of fig. 23, and without the coloured strips that the Dayas of Borneo introduce. The Atjeh trawang is, in this sense, the trawang in its most abstract form: a decoration of openings, of light and shadow, without any addition of colour.
Significance
The Atjeh trawang is, in Wagner’s account, one of the masterpieces of Atjehnese decorative art — the equal, in plaiting, of what the idja is in silk weaving. Its significance in the larger history of Atjehnese handicraft is that it shows a regional craft tradition achieving decoration by pure structure — by the systematic folding of the plaiting strip — rather than by the addition of colour or foreign material. The trawang is thus the structural counterpart, in plaiting, of the restraint that Wagner reads in the plang of Atjeh ikat: a single technique, a single material, a single decorative idea, carried to its finest expression. The pairing of the Atjeh trawang with the Padangse bovenlanden product in Wagner’s catalogue is, in turn, the recognition that the two highland regions of Sumatra shared, in plaiting, a taste for the open-work lace that the rest of the archipelago did not match.
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. 29–30, 32 (fig. 24), 33.