Mas Pirngadie was an indigenous craft expert — the Mas (a Javanese honorific, equivalent roughly to “sir” or “master”) indicating his standing in the colonial-native scholarly milieu — who was the named co-author (with J. E. Jasper) of the multi-volume handbook De Inlandsche Kunstnijverheid in Nederlandsch-Indië, the principal Dutch colonial reference on Indonesian craft and the work cited by Prof. T. J. Bezemer in the 1933 plate-atlas for the technical description of the à cire perdue casting process that frames the Atjeh *soeasa* wrapping technique. His co-authorship is the most prominent indigenous contribution to the Dutch colonial scholarship on which the AcehWiki’s Atjeh craft entries draw.
The honorific Mas
The Javanese title Mas — placed before Pirngadie’s name on the title-pages and citations of the Inlandsche Kunstnijverheid — was, in the colonial-native scholarly milieu of the Netherlands Indies, the standard honorific for an indigenous man of acknowledged expertise or rank. It was the equivalent, in Javanese customary usage, of “sir” or “master,” and its use before Pirngadie’s name in the formal citation J. Jasper en Mas Pirngadie signals that Pirngadie was a recognised expert in his own right, not merely a research assistant. Bezemer’s 1933 atlas preserves the convention, citing the work as by “J. E. Jasper en Mas Pirngadie” and so according Pirngadie the dignity of full co-authorship.
Co-authorship of the Inlandsche Kunstnijverheid
The Jasper-Pirngadie collaboration, in the Inlandsche Kunstnijverheid in Nederlandsch-Indië, was of a kind typical of Dutch colonial craft scholarship: a Dutch colonial official (Jasper) as author-of-record, paired with an indigenous expert (Pirngadie) who supplied the technical craft knowledge and the indigenous vocabulary. The arrangement gave the work its dual authority — Jasper supplied the colonial-scholarly framing and the European-language publication, Pirngadie supplied the indigenous technical knowledge — and made the work the standard Dutch reference on Indonesian craft for the next generation. The technical descriptions for which the work is cited by Bezemer — the description of cire perdue casting on pp. 25–26 of Volume IV, and the description of granulation on p. 65 of Volume IV — are descriptions that, in the colonial-craft-scholarship convention, would have been supplied by Pirngadie from his own craft knowledge and then edited into European-language form by Jasper.
The cire perdue passage and its Atjeh frame
The passage of the Inlandsche Kunstnijverheid cited by Bezemer for the *cire perdue* casting process describes the technique as practised by a Toba-Batak goldsmith on Noord-Sumatra. The passage is unusually detailed: it describes the building of the core (de globale voorvorm, de kern) from a mixture of clay and burnt rice-bran, the laying-on of *rimbaga* (a wax-resin-fat compound) to form the wax model, the modelling of the relief in further rimbaga, the attachment of wax pouring-channels (giettuitjes), the coating of the wax model with dry clay powder and then with a clay-and-rice-bran paste, the melting-out of the wax, and the pouring-in of the molten metal. The detail of this description — particularly the use of the indigenous technical term rimbaga for the wax-resin-fat compound — is the kind of craft-internal knowledge that, in the colonial-craft-scholarship convention, would have been supplied by Pirngadie from his own observation or from his network of indigenous craft contacts.
The same passage is the technical frame within which Bezemer, in 1933, defines the Atjeh goldsmiths’ alternative technique: the Atjeh goldsmiths wrapped a copper core with *soeasa* sheet rather than casting the ornament in one piece. The contrast is documented by Bezemer precisely because Jasper and Pirngadie had already documented the alternative Toba-Batak casting process. Pirngadie’s co-authorship of the Inlandsche Kunstnijverheid is, in this sense, the indigenous-craft-knowledge contribution to the Dutch scholarly record against which Bezemer defines the Atjeh-specific technique.
Significance
For Atjeh’s history, Pirngadie’s significance is principally as the most prominent indigenous contributor to the Dutch colonial scholarship on which the AcehWiki’s Atjeh craft entries draw. The Inlandsche Kunstnijverheid is the standard Dutch colonial handbook of Indonesian craft, and its technical vocabularies (cire perdue, rimbaga, spinsbek, soeasa, granuleeren, filigraanwerk) — vocabularies that, in the colonial-craft-scholarship convention, would have been supplied by Pirngadie from indigenous sources — are the technical terms in which Atjeh craft was described in the late colonial period. Any AcehWiki entry on Atjeh craft that uses these technical terms is, in effect, drawing on the vocabulary established by Pirngadie’s contribution to the Jasper-Pirngadie handbook.
Pirngadie’s co-authorship also represents, in the broader frame of AcehWiki source criticism, a recognition that the Dutch colonial scholarship on Atjeh craft was not produced by Dutch scholars alone but was a collaborative product in which indigenous experts supplied the substantive craft knowledge. The AcehWiki convention of citing the work as “Jasper and Pirngadie” — rather than “Jasper” alone — is, in this sense, a small act of restitution of the indigenous contribution to the colonial scholarship.
See Also
- J. E. Jasper
- De Inlandsche Kunstnijverheid in Nederlandsch-Indië
- Indonesische Kunstnijverheid (Bezemer 1933)
- T. J. Bezemer
- Atjeh goldsmithing (soeasa technique)
- Rimbaga
- Spinsbek
- Cire perdue
- Granuleeren
- Filigraanwerk (Padangsche Bovenlanden)
- Noord-Sumatra
- Toba-Bataklanden
- Sierkunst in Indonesië
Source
De Inlandsche Kunstnijverheid in Nederlandsch-Indië, by J. E. Jasper en Mas Pirngadie, Vol. IV (on gold- and silverwork), pp. 25–26 (on the cire perdue casting process) and p. 65 (on granulation). Cited in T. J. Bezemer, Indonesische Kunstnijverheid (‘s-Gravenhage: ten Hagen, 1933), p. 13. Universiteitsbibliotheek Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, LS 5411.