Plaiting basic necessities of life — mats and baskets

Heritage Snippets of Sarawak by FoSM

Heritage Snippets of Sarawak

By Heidi Munan

Photo 1: Bukat mat with 4 motifs. Upper Baluy River, Sarawak Source: Plaited Arts from the Borneo Rainforest, B. Sellato (ed.)

MAT and basket making is a skill known throughout Borneo and probably one of the oldest known crafts. Unfortunately, prehistoric evidence of this is scarce since organic materials deteriorate quickly in our tropical climate. However, traces of plaited wrapping materials have been discovered in some neolithic burials in Niah Cave (Sarawak). The late Barbara Harrisson identified these materials as pandanus mats dating back to around 200 BCE–400 CE (“A Classification of Stone Age Burials from Niah Great Cave, Sarawak” by Barbara Harrisson in Sarawak Museum Journal Vol XV Nos 30-31).

Interestingly, historical explorers rarely mentioned the traditional art of mat and basket making in their accounts. Their focus was more on luxurious items like cloth-of-gold from Malay courts or intricately crafted weapons. One exception to this trend was Hugh Low, who arrived in Sarawak in 1846 and took note of the mats in the region. In his book “Sarawak, Its Inhabitants and Productions”, Low described mats made by Malay women of the Natuna Islands offshore from Tanjung Datu. He marvelled at the “mats woven from a soft and white rush, with larger ones featuring intricate open-work patterns along the edges”. Today, the bergerang mat continues to be crafted in Sarawak.

Photo 2: Iban bemban mat with ‘Malay Pillow’ design with strips of bemban at Kpg Semulong. Photo: Chen Li Li (LEE)

What are mats and baskets made of?

One of the primary indigenous fibres used in crafting mats is the screw pine, known locally as mengkuang for its coarse variety and pandan for its finer kind (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandanus). Additionally, palm fronds are used to create simple, rough mats and rattan is another source material.

While women typically handle the harvesting of materials, extraction of rattan is traditionally carried out by men. Rattan, being thorny and tenaciously attached to trees that aid its growth, requires significant physical strength to harvest—tearing down the stems, stripping them, and cutting them to manageable lengths (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rattan). Common fibres used in the finishing work of baskets and mats include ferns and creepers.

How are the fibres prepared?

In most cases, the harvested canes are halved or quartered and the smooth skin pared off.

Bemban/arrowroot (https://www.nparks.gov.sg/florafaunaweb/flora/5/6/5607) is skinned like rotan/rattan; the whole twig is not sufficiently pliable to use.

For pandan, the central spine of the leaf is removed. Then it is cut into working lengths and calibrated with a jangka, a set of blades set in a wooden handle at fixed intervals. The raw leaves are pulled through this ‘cutting comb’. Two or more blades stuck into a block of softwood serve the same purpose, to obtain even-sized plaiting material for a smooth product like fabric. The prepared pandan leaf strips are pulled over a dowel to make them pliable. Then they are soaked in several changes of water and put into the sun to bleach to a light colour.

Photo 3: Iban bemban mat being plaited at Kpg Engkeranji. Photo by Chen Li Li (LEE)

Techniques

The term ‘mat-weaving’ is misleading as most mats are not woven on a loom or a frame, but plaited. The mat-maker sits on the ground or floor; she uses her feet and toes to steady loose strands, particularly when a mat is being started. Once the mat fabric is made for some distance, the mat-maker works forward. If she is using the diaper technique, she holds a sheaf of opposing strands in each hand and crosses them under and over each other in a constantly moving row.

Most Sarawak mats and baskets are worked diagonally, in a basic twill (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-fhGkOJu88&ab_channel=TextileIndie). Designs are achieved by variations in this pattern. Two of the hallmarks of a well-made mat are straight edges and accurately right-angled corners.

Exceptions to the diaper-weave rule are found in Borneo among the longest-settled communities. One strong Bidayuh mat is made of split rattan rods that can measure up to 2 to 3 metres in the warp and tekalong (breadfruit) strips in the weft (https://borneodictionary.com/bidayuh-bau/kasah). The Bidayuh also make a carrying basket on a vertical warp of rattan, with horizontal strips of the same material, plaited in at right angles or ‘on the cross’. The bottom of this basket is twill; the sides are free hand woven rather than plaited.

The Orang Ulu of Central Borneo make a mat by placing pencil-thick lengths of rattan next to each other and threading them together, using an awl. The ends are bruised and scraped to expose the fibre to make a braided edge. This mat is quite stiff and can only be rolled, not folded.

Photo 4: Malay bergerang with ‘open work’. Source: Plaited Arts from the Borneo Rainforest, B. Sellato (ed.)

Decoration

There are three main ways to decorate a mat: 1) the use of colour, 2) variations in the plaiting technique to produce figures, 3) the addition of ornamental eyelets (open-work) or contours. The open-work can be found in bergerang of the Saribas Malay (https://g.co/arts/7Znfd9vLafCZEcEn8). Iban mats feature self-coloured patterns and figures which only appear in oblique light (see photo 2).

Baskets

Baskets are used primarily for carrying things and for storage (https://museum.sarawak.gov.my/web/subpage/webpage_view/107). Farmers carry a basket to hold their lunch, water, and vegetables are carried home in baskets. When rice is harvested, the precious grain is poured into a rolled-up mat stood upright inside a sturdy back basket; this doubles the carrying capacity. Many big baskets have an articulated panel, fixed at the base and tied at the sides, serving to accommodate wide loads. They are often plaited in the ‘honeycomb’ technique for lightness, strength and air circulation.

Photo 5: Large basket with articulated panel, fixed at the base and tied at the sides, serving to accommodate wide loads. Source: Plaited Arts from the Borneo Rainforest, B. Sellato (ed.)

Smaller baskets are used as seed baskets. They are worked two-ply for strength, the outer decorative layer is plaited as finely as any craftswoman can manage to encourage dense growth of the crop. The base of the seed baskets is worked of protruding cones; a similar technique produces hats, and receptacles to hold offerings for the agricultural deities.

Large baskets get rougher wear than mats; many of these are strengthened with a vertical strut of rattan and finished with a rim of rattan lashed on with a finer fibre. A basket for special uses may have a top rim of wood or palm spathe, decoratively stitched to the main basket fabric. Iban seed baskets, raga, are often finished this way.

Photo 6: Iban seed basket, Borneo Cultures Museum. Source: Louise Macul

Basket traps and fish weirs, or traps with a rattan or bamboo spring, are also basketry items. Storage baskets are tightly woven, often lined with tree bark or animal skin and have a close-fitting lid which makes them waterproof. These baskets were used to store valuable pusaka such as clothing, textiles, and jewellery.

In the kitchen today we see a plethora of plasticware, but large winnowing trays are still used, often to sun-dry food. Rice cakes are steamed in palm-leaf baskets. These ketupat can be plain cubes or fish, bird and other fancy shapes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyXHOqmYWmM&ab_channel=Bite-SizedMusings). A narrow basket is pushed into the fermenting must of rice wine to form a well from which the liquor can be ladled. One specialised basket used by the Orang Ulu groups is the baby carrier which allows a young mother (or father!) to carry the infant wherever they go (https://wadd.asia/page/682/sarawak-the-story-of-the-kayan-and-kenyah-baby-carrier-avet-or-ba). These carriers are considered pusaka and kept by families for generations.

Artistic Tradition

Mat-makers generally pride themselves in copying patterns from their elders’ work. The only way we can know the very old patterns today is from a long sequence of good reproductions, filtered through the eye and mind of each succeeding crafter.

Across Sarawak every generation gives birth to a few creative souls who see new things introduced from outside. For example, a mat-maker whose community had shifted from the highlands to the coastal region in the 1950s found the goats raised by her Malay neighbours interesting enough to depict one on a mat!

Mat and basket designs are usually repetitive, either in friezes or frames or overall patterns. However, sometimes they tell of ancestors or record current events. The monochrome Iban mats tell tales of legendary heroes, especially of Kumang and her pet leopard. A few other designs are: ‘leopard claw stealing fruit’, ‘bird’s nest fern’, ‘sunrise’, ‘Malay pillow’, ‘man in the moon’, ‘human torso’, ‘whirls’, and ‘sunburst’. But only the person who made the mat can tell you the real story.

Heidi (Adelheid) Munan was educated in Switzerland and New Zealand. She has been studying the material culture of Sarawak for over 50 years. In her capacity as a private researcher and Hon. Curator of Beads at the Sarawak Museum she has had ample opportunity to study and learn from indigenous experts and foreign scholars in this and related fields. Besides an active involvement in tourism and handicrafts promotion, she has published books, articles and papers on various topics related to the history and material culture of Sarawak and Borneo.

“Heritage Snippets of Sarawak” is a fortnightly column.

— DayakDaily