Kota Gédang — also spelled Kota Gēdang in the Bezemer atlas — was, in the Dutch colonial administrative geography of Sumatra, a town in the Gouvernement van Sumatra’s Westkust (Government of Sumatra’s West Coast), and the place of origin of the pedal-driven weaving-loom illustrated as plate 67 of Prof. T. J. Bezemer’s 1933 plate-atlas *Indonesische Kunstnijverheid*. The town appears in the Bezemer atlas on the same page-spread as the Atjeh loom of plate 62 and the Atjeh silk ikats of plates 65 and 66, and the juxtaposition is comparative: the Kota Gédang loom represents the more advanced, pedal-driven type of Sumatran weaving-loom, contrasted with the Atjeh loom of plate 62 as the more conservative, hand-operated type.
The plate and its four-language caption
Plate 67 of the Bezemer atlas (p. 49) is captioned, in the four-language convention of the atlas, as follows:
- Dutch: Weefgetouw met voetbeweging. Kota Gédang. Sumatra’s Westkust. — “Weaving-loom with foot-movement. Kota Gédang. Sumatra’s West Coast.”
- English: Loom with Pedal Driving. Kota Gēdang. West Coast of Sumatra.
- French: Métier à tisser avec motion de pied. Kota Gédang, Côte ouest de Sumatra. — “Loom with foot-movement. Kota Gédang, West Coast of Sumatra.”
- German: Webstuhl mit Fussbetrieb. Kota Gēdang, Sumatra’s Westküste. — “Loom with foot-drive. Kota Gēdang, Sumatra’s West Coast.”
The four-language caption identifies the object as a weaving-loom with foot-movement — that is, a pedal-driven loom of the type that Bezemer’s Inleiding (§ B. Weven, pp. 5–7) identifies as the most advanced of the three principal types of Indonesian weaving-loom. The caption also identifies the place of origin as Kota Gédang on Sumatra’s Westkust — placing the town in the colonial administrative region of the Gouvernement van Sumatra’s Westkust.
The pedal-driven loom
The pedal-driven loom of plate 67 is the type that Bezemer describes in § B of his Inleiding as the most doelmatig (purposeful, efficient) of the three principal Indonesian loom-types. The pedal-driven loom differs from the other two types in that the weaver, seated on a bench, operates the even-and-odd warp-threads by means of pedals (pedalen) rather than by hand; this frees her hands for the weft-passing, and so speeds up the weaving. The pedal-driven loom also does not require the weaver to use her back to keep the warp-threads taut — a feature of the eastern-Archipelago loom-type — and so allows her to weave longer pieces without fatigue. The pedal-driven loom is, in Bezemer’s account, used in the late colonial period on Sumatra’s Westkust (at Kota Gédang), on South-Celebes for narrow weavings, on Soerabaja, in the eastern corner of Java, and in the Vorstenlanden of Middle-Java. The West-Sumatran centre at Kota Gédang is therefore one of several regional centres of the pedal-driven loom-type in the late colonial archipelago.
Comparative juxtaposition with the Atjeh loom
The juxtaposition of the Kota Gédang pedal-loom of plate 67 with the Atjeh loom of plate 62 on the same page-spread of the Bezemer atlas is, in this sense, a comparative juxtaposition of two Sumatran loom-types. The Atjeh loom of plate 62 represents the older, hand-operated type — one of the first two types described in Bezemer’s Inleiding § B, in which the weaver operates the warp-threads by hand and uses her back to keep the warp taut. The Kota Gédang loom of plate 67 represents the more advanced, pedal-driven type — the third type described in the Inleiding, in which the weaver operates the warp-threads by pedals and sits on a bench. The juxtaposition places Atjeh, in 1933, on the conservative side of the Sumatran weaving-technology spectrum — a placement consistent with the broader late-colonial Dutch characterisation of Atjeh as a region where older craft techniques persisted.
The juxtaposition also places the Atjeh silk ikats of plates 65 and 66 — which were presumably woven on the Atjeh hand-loom of plate 62 — within the broader Sumatran weaving-technology context. The Atjeh weavers produced their silk ikats on the older, hand-operated loom; the West-Sumatran weavers, at Kota Gédang, used the more advanced pedal-loom. The two regions represent two stages of Sumatran weaving technology, with Atjeh on the conservative stage and the Westkust on the more advanced stage.
Geography and people
Kota Gédang lies in the highlands of west-central Sumatra, in the colonial Gouvernement van Sumatra’s Westkust — the same colonial administrative region as the Padangsche Bovenlanden. The town is in the heartland of the Menangkabau people, and the pedal-loom of plate 67 is accordingly a Minangkabau craft object. The Minangkabau were, in the late colonial period, one of the most commercially and technologically dynamic of the Sumatran peoples, and the adoption of the pedal-driven loom at Kota Gédang is consistent with the broader Minangkabau pattern of technological modernisation in the late colonial period. The contrast with Atjeh — where the older hand-loom persisted — is, in this sense, a contrast between a more conservative and a more modernising Sumatran weaving tradition.
Significance for Atjeh
For Atjeh’s history, Kota Gédang is significant principally as the Sumatran weaving-technology foil against which the Atjeh loom of plate 62 is defined in the Bezemer atlas. The Kota Gédang pedal-loom of plate 67 represents the more advanced Sumatran weaving technology of the late colonial period; the Atjeh hand-loom of plate 62 represents the more conservative technology. The juxtaposition of the two looms on the same page-spread of the atlas is a comparative juxtaposition of two Sumatran weaving-technology stages, within which the Atjeh loom is placed on the conservative side. The town is, in this sense, a Sumatran craft-geographical reference point for the Atjeh weaving tradition — the place against which Atjeh’s technological conservatism is measured in the late colonial Dutch scholarship.
See Also
- Atjeh weefgetouw (Bezemer plate 62)
- Atjeh imported silk warp ikat (Bezemer plate 65)
- Atjeh silk ikat warp strokes (Bezemer plate 66)
- Atjeh silk ikat weaving
- Atjeh silk culture
- Indonesische Kunstnijverheid (Bezemer 1933)
- T. J. Bezemer
- Padangsche Bovenlanden
- Sumatra
- Minangkabau
- Acheh
- 1933
Source
Indonesische Kunstnijverheid. Platen-Atlas met Inleiding van Prof. T. J. Bezemer (‘s-Gravenhage: N.V. tot Exploitatie van het Maandblad “Nederl-Indië, Oud en Nieuw”; ten Hagen’s Drukkerij en Uitgeversmaatschappij N.V., 15 October 1933), p. 6 (on the pedal-driven loom-type in the Inleiding § B) and plate 67 (the Kota Gédang pedal-loom, p. 49). Universiteitsbibliotheek Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, LS 5411.