In the fingers and between the ears: tangible skill and intangible knowledge

Two years ago in North Sumatra, I met Gresia Simanihuruk in Lumban Suhisuhi, one of the few remaining active centres of Toba Batak weaving. Gresia was in her late teens, polite and friendly, like girls brought up in the kampung. And what a fast weaver she was! I watched her work. She was making what everybody there makes: a shoulder cloth (uwis nipes) for the neighbouring culture, called Karo. Her village has become a major supplier of shoulder cloths for the Karo. When the Karo became connected to the city by a road a century ago, the women there stopped weaving because they could earn more from gardening. Gresia's village took up some of the slack.

 

Gresia was working with her mother. Her mother would wind the warp and instruct her on how to weave it. When Gresia got home from school she would diligently and dexterously throw the weft between the warp yarns, managing the supplementary weft more than competently. She wasn’t able to answer many of my questions about the details of weaving, however.  “I don’t really know anything about wrapping a warp,” she said. “My mother does that.” Warping is when the design and quality of a cloth are determined and where weaving knowledge is key.

 

At her age and with her education, Gresia bridged generations and worlds. I found her easy to talk with and she gave me her What'sApp number in case I had any further questions. Yesterday I made use of it. "Gresia, do you remember me? I visited you a couple of years ago..." She responded immediately, and I plied her with questions.  I wanted to know about the classification and construction of warp stripes in her region. She excused herself. “I’m sorry, bu (a polite way to address someone of my age), but I don’t know how to make an ulos.” (Ulos is the name of ritual cloth in her Toba Batak culture.)

 

Then she told me that she was now studying in Medan, the capital city of her province, a good 6-10 hours away from her village by bus. She had chosen to study law. She kindly offered to put my questions to her mother and get back to me. 

 

In the meantime I pondered her response.

 

In my book, Legacy in cloth (2009), I cite M. Joustra, who wrote about the Batak weaving arts more than a century ago. He pointed out that weavers could be highly skilled and knowledgeable, but if they didn’t have the opportunity to express the extent of their knowledge and skill, the weaving arts would fall into decline. Here I was seeing something different: knowledge was not being transferred from one generation to the next. This young woman’s skill throwing weft while sitting in the loom was nothing short of impressive, but she did not "know how to make an ulos".

 

I imagine her life while she was growing up in the village. Weaving knowledge is typically passed down  starting when children are very young. They learn to wind the weft for their mother, a straight-forward, time-consuming and relatively mindless task. Once they master the skill, they are able to save their mother a lot of time. As girls grow older, they take on other tedious tasks like starching yarn and winding it into balls. Eventually they may climb into the loom and learn to weave. This is probably how it had been for Gresia because she grew up in a weaver family. By the time she was in the 6th grade, she was a  proficient weaver, helping her mother earn the income needed by the family. 

 

This video shows Gresia weaving with three shuttles and numerous sets of supplementary weft.

Winding a warp is something Batak weavers once relegated to older generations of women, the ones with grandchildren. Winding a warp has to be done carefully and without error. It is absolutely key to the success of a cloth because it determines most of the design features. So it was normal that Gresia's mother performed this task and that Gresia herself had not yet learned it.

 

As I try to fathom the vocabulary of weaving, I am learning how ‘shaping’ the cloth is the central challenge for the makers.  A weaver has to keep her wits about her. She has to be skilled at a unique weaver-oriented way of counting, be able to focus, have knowledge of designs within her tradition, be able to wind with an even tension and have the ability to correct errors. The steps in the process are expressed using specialized words that frame a unique understanding of the unique way that yarn is manipulated in that culture. Weavers use this specialized language when they compare their work, discuss their challenges, share their inspiration and innovations, and teach others. They 'think' their designs and techniques in this language. It captures the conceptual core of their tradition. They can only weave 'in Batak'. A child will progress from the 'mindless doing’ of tedious, time-consuming tasks, and gradually become inducted into a more conscious awareness of her art. She will learn the designs and technical rules and also her creative latitude within that complex. Eventually, she will have developed a mental map of how it all fits together. Only then will she have the capacity to invent and transform designs in a way consistent with her tradition. Many weavers have told me that learning about weaving is a never-ending proposition; there is always more to learn. 

 

Gresia's shirt reads, "I am a Weaver"

Gresia had moved to the big city and was now focused on her books. She had developed superb weaving skills, but her mental map of her weaving tradition was unfinished. “I don’t know how to make a cloth,” she had said. Now, far from the village, she would probably never have the opportunity to pick up that missing knowledge; it takes time and focused learning, endless discussions. What she is missing out on back in the village is complex and rigorous. Even if that knowledge is rarely recognized by non-weavers.

 

I think of another skilled weaver whom I met on Samosir Island years ago who marketed her weavings through Gresia's village to the same Karo market. “I would like to learn how to weave the cloths of my ancestors,” she told me, but she had no access to the knowledge, equipment and materials to be able to do so. Moreover, she was poor, and couldn't spare the time to travel around and search for what she was missing. She was a proficient weaver, but alienated from her heritage. She represented the end of her tradition. I assumed that Gresia's mother was in the same position, knowing only how to make uwis nipes for Karo. It turned out that Gresia's mother once did weave in her own tradition. But if income is meagre, the need for cash is acute, and a weaver can earn more by weaving for another ethnic group, she will be enticed to leave her own weaving tradition behind. Thus a cultural tradition can dwindle away. 

 

How often skill is confused with the knowledge needed to maintain an art. How commonly intangible cultural heritage is confused with the tangible because people do not know the difference. Gresia knew the difference intuitively: she could weave but she didn't know 'how to make an ulos'. She was good at the tangible but was not yet fully inducted in the intangible. In my experience, Fashion brands and even Fashion scholars, regularly fail to register this distinction. Many congratulate themselves on keeping a heritage alive by hiring skilled indigenous craftswomen to perform their craft for the needs of the industry (embroidery, dyeing, beadwork etc.). However, the industry of Fashion is like the Karo market. It can  seduce craftswomen away from their own traditions with the promise of a wage. Accurate performance of technical skills is tremendously important but it is not the same as perpetuating a tradition. A tradition is also about what is between the ears. It, too, can be forgotten and lost if it is not exercised. Working independently and creatively within the cognitive frame of one's own knowledge system is different from being a skilled labourer for an employer within a different cultural system. Even when the skill is the same, there is a cognitive world of difference. Indigenous traditions can be eroded even when intentions are the best. A wage is critical for craftspeople, as it is for everybody, but when it costs them their tradition, it is a stiff and eternal price to pay for a wage.

 

In Gresia's case, the end of her role in her tradition is paired with gaining a formal education, no doubt something her mother strongly supports so that her daughter will not be trapped in tedious craft labour that is poorly remunerated and has no future. In the city and at the university, Gresia has entered a different cultural universe. Distance is a factor. If Gresia is able to build a career, she will only occasionally have the opportunity to return to the village -- for marriage and death rituals -- and never for long periods.  Craft is socially so poorly valued that she may be pushed to feel shame that her family had to rely on weaving for income. But even if she is able to maintain a feeling of pride for her skill, without the accompanying intangible knowledge she will not be able to pass her tradition on to her children. 

The comb is used to assist with creating supplementary weft pattern sheds in the sides of the uwis nipes. 

Undocumented Weaving and Dyeing Techniques in SiLaen

 

fig. 1 Ikat in the Sangkarsangkar 

The weaving tradition in the area Southeast of Lake Toba was once unique and rich. Various types of traditional cloths (ulos) were made here that are not found in other Batak areas, such as the Ragi Harangan and the Sangkarsangkar, remarkable for their ikat patterning and deep, rich dyes. The weaving tradition in this region has never been well studied. Weavers there resisted commercialization and commodification of their work longer than in other regions, but in the 1980s and 1990s this resistance was finally broken. Many old pieces appeared on the tourist/collector market and the tradition lost its vibrancy.  

 

In 2016, when I was trying to learn more about the use of Morinda citrifolia, a tree that yields red dye, known amongst the Batak as bangkudu, I drove through SiLaen, about a half hour away from Porsea at the S.E corner of Lake Toba. When Batak weavers still relied on natural dyes, bangkudu was still a common tree found in every village. Now it is rare because weavers use commercial, synthetic red dye that they purchase on the market. A bangkudu tree in SiLaen caught my attention, therefore, when I drove past. I wanted to know if there was a weaver in the vicinity and so I knocked on the door of a house near the tree and I was invited in.

 

My host was an elderly weaver, probably in her 70s, who had some ulos for sale. I was in luck because when I enquired, it turned out that her grandmother had worked with natural dyes and she had observed her grandmother until she was 18 years of age. I asked the elderly weaver some questions. I couldn’t understand her answers in their entirety. Nevertheless, I was able to take a few notes during our brief stay. I believe that the techniques that she described are unique to her region. 

 

She remembered that yarn had been locally spun using the spinning wheel (sorha) in 1942. Cotton (kapas) was planted and after 6 months the cotton bolls could be harvested.  It hurt, she said, “Hansit ma hape”, and my sense was that she was referring to the hard labour involved in making yarn.

 

Then the yarn was dyed. She mentioned the distinction between blue yarn, dyed solely in an indigo solution, and black yarn (na itom) made using the sigira technique. I was familiar with this from all over the Batak region. She said that the yarn (1 kumpal, a skein-like measure) was first dyed in an indigo solution (mansop) for three days, 6 hours at a time each day. This turned the yarn blue. When the indigo process was finished and the yarn was dry, the next stage could begin. This was when they put the blue yarn into a red dye (bangkudu) bath. The use of Morinda citrifolia as part of the sigira process was new to me. In other regions, the sigira process involves putting the indigo-dyed yarn into black mud where the iron content of the mud interacts with the indigo, turning the yarn black.

 

There were no restrictions on who could fetch the bangkudu root; it could be harvested by both men and women. The dye material was dried and then brought to a boil (together with other ingredients), but not boiled for long, at the edge of the river. The weaver said that a hole was dug in the ground beside the river and the liquid bangkudu dye was poured into the hole. It was not clear to me whether the earth of the hole was sufficient to make the desired chemical reaction, or whether additional earth, which she said was fetched from the foot of the mountains, was needed. Water with high iron content was added to the mixture (aek sibaungbaung: na tasihan, tasik, aek na karatan) meaning rusty water, or water with iron content. One would not wash clothes in such water, the weaver said, or they would turn yellow. ‘Rusty water’ is an ingredient when dyeing with Morinda citrifolia elsewhere as well. The weaver said that this combination of red and blue was used for various ulos design types and she gave the design types called Ragi Pangko and Antahantak (fig 2) as examples. (Legacy in cloth, Fig Cat 4.4 p. and Fig Cat 5.6 p. 304 – 305).

 

The information given (or that I managed to understand) was limited, but it gave me pause to reflect on her tradition and of course it raised several additional questions.  

 

1.     The weaver did not show me an example of the result from dyeing yarn with both blue and red dyes, and the colour that it yields is not clear to me. However, reviewing the cloths from the weaver’s area, I see a range from deep blue with a reddish-purple sheen, to a deep chocolate red. My awe for the prowess of the dyers explodes. The dyers knew how to create quite a variety of deep colours.  Evident in fig. 1 is the white of undyed yarn, the deep chocolate-red colour, and also bright red ikat. One question that comes up is whether the deep chocolate-red colour results just from bangkudu combined with the iron-rich mud and water (or perhaps tanin), or whether there is also indigo dye involved.  In fig. 2 a weaver in Porsea is holding up a lighter-coloured cloth of which the sides have a red/purple hue. Could this be the result of indigo dyeing with sigira that includes bangkudu? By combining blue and red by dyeing the yarn successively in these two colours followed by the mud bath, could the weaver achieve a whole gradient of colours along a blue – red – black spectrum? Deeper colours are produced by dipping the yarn in the dye over and over again. However, the elderly weaver told me that the dip in sigira was done only once. The proof would be in experimenting with the dye baths, or listening to elderly weavers – of which few, anymore, know the dyeing tradition. None practise it anymore.

fig. 2. A weaver in Porsea holds up
the design type called  Antakantak

 

2.     Special, in this region, is red-dyed ikat patterning in indigo-dyed yarn. I don’t think that the weaver was describing how this was done because she didn’t mention ikat – except to say in passing that she had taught all of her daughters how to make ikat. To yield this result, the yarn would be dyed with indigo after the yarn was wrapped with ties to resist the dye. When the ties were removed and the yarn was dipped in the red or bangkudu dye, the spared bits would turn red (fig. 2) (see also Legacy in cloth, p. 305 Fig. Cat 5.6b). The question that arises here is whether the weaver would submerge even the blue parts of the yarn in the red dye, thus dyeing it both blue and red, or whether she would bind off the blue part? Given the colour variation in old cloths, they may have practised both strategies.

 

3.     How important and prevalent was the use of the iron-rich water when dyeing in this region? As the weaver mentioned, it would turn clothing yellow. Certainly, many red cloths from this region have a deep maroon-chocolate colour (fig. ) e.g. Legacy in cloth, p. 268, 278). This could be from tanins, but also from the iron in the water.

 

fig. 3 resist-dyed ends of the Sangkarsangkar ulos

I became very excited when the weaver remembered that a resist dye technique had been followed to make the ‘white ends of a cloth’. This is evident in fig. 3. It was also sometimes practised when making the most extraordinary cloth from the region, the Pinunsaan (Legacy in cloth p. 363), but also other weavings with white ends, such as the Simpar (p. 300 Legacy in cloth). However, I had never met a weaver who was familiar with the process. This weaver in SiLaen was able to let me know that the end (of the warp, not the whole cloth) was dibungkus or tied off using part (leaves?) of the banana tree. The reed-like sungkit could be used as well. It is easier just to sew a white piece of ulos onto the middle section to produce white ends in the cloth, and this is done in 'morden times'. It is unclear whether the resist dye technique was always practised in the past to achieve this design result. This would be consistent with the deep Batak conviction that the warp should not be broken, but rather continuous.

 

The weaver also remembered the use of hori, a nettle plant that Batak weavers used to make a coarse fabric. I had never been able to find first-hand information about the use of this fiber. The fibres, if anything like the nettles in the Northern hemisphere, were probably quite long. She mentioned that they were knotted (dipuduni) probably end to end to produce a long yarn, and then wound up using the spinning wheel. To my knowledge there is only one hori in a museum collection, a coarse and simple cloth.