Ikat Technique And Dutch East Indian Ikats

By Charles F. Ikle

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Sep 6, 2016
• ISBN: 9781473352810

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

IKAT TECHNIQUE

AND

DUTCH EAST INDIAN IKATS

Unless otherwise mentioned the reproductions in this article are from the collection of Charles F. Iklé, New York.

MANIFESTATIONS of the aesthetic feeling of primitive people and the artistic creations resulting therefrom have only recently aroused interest in our western art world. The interest however has been limited mostly to sculpture such as African Negro figures and masks. Textile art has been sorely neglected. Thus can it be explained that few people only are acquainted with Ikats, the type of weaving about to be discussed here. In the Malayan Archipelago where the Ikat technique still excels today both quantitatively and qualitatively, the word Ikat means winding around, tying, binding. The effect produced by this technique is that of a flame pattern and we find the term of flame weaving applied to it in Germany, Italy and Sweden. The French call it flammé and also Chiné. In Spain we find the term tela de lenguas (tongue of flame cloth). The earliest specimens preserved were found in Egyptian graves and were made by Arabs (Fatimides) around 1100 A.D. (Plate 1). We cannot tell how far back Ikats were first made in the Malayan Islands. While doubtless many weaves of this type were buried with the dead, the damp climate has prevented their preservation; so that now we have practically none more than a hundred years old, although the art has been practised for many centuries. Evidence of this is found in the Ajanta Frescoes of northwest British India (Plate 3) dating from about 600 A.D. in which the drapery of the figures, patterned with a flame design, has been identified by A. K. Coomaraswamy of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts as unmistakably of Ikat weave.

PLATE 1

WARP IKAT. EGYPTO-ARABIC XI–XII CENTURY. METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART. NEW YORK.

PLATE 2

IKAT LOOM FROM THE ISLAND OF SOEMBA MOUNTED WARP, AFTER THE BINDING HAS BEEN DONE, READY FOR DYEING.

PLATE 3

AJANTA FRESCO (C. 600 A.D.) SHOWING COSTUMES OF IKAT WEAVES. PUBLISHED BY THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1915.

The procedure of making Ikat is very different from the well known Batik process in which the coloring takes place after the weaving. Also, it must be distinguished from what is generally known as the tie and dye technique (plangi) where an already woven cloth is knotted or bound with thread or fibre in certain places and then dipped into a dye so that the body of the cloth takes the color and the knotted or tied parts do not. Both of these techniques are a process of applying design and color on