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MAGIC CLOTH
OF
BALI
Story and Photos by Torie Olson
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Morinda Workshop. Ibu Sri works on a loom in the background.
Glorious herons and kingfishers decorate the colorful path
to an ancient Balinese weaving history.
W
ith its Arctic temperatures, ten foot snowdrifts,
and soul crushing darkness at 4 p.m., my world
is out of whack. For such an extreme winter,
Bali is my cure.
I go directly to Ubud, the cultural center of
the island, where I discover rituals that can make your world
right. I wear sarongs and sashes; eat the perfect balance of
sweet, sour, salt and bitter; attend sacred ceremonies in roofless temples; and learn to make offerings.
Offerings are everywhere in Bali—on the ground, up in
the god houses, floating down waterways. They are tied to
the handlebars of scooters and placed at the foot of looms.
Ketut hands me a strip of palm leaf and teaches me how
to weave an offerings tray. We fill it with flower petals, rice
and incense, then present it to the spirits, both good and
bad. “We must please both or they will cause mischief in our
world.” she explains.
I light a joss stick, say a prayer and wave it upwards with
the smoke. I am warm for the first time in months, but not
too warm; each afternoon, the monsoon shows up to cool the
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land. The fields are greener than green. There are kingfishers
with turquoise wings, and deep red dragonflies. In Bali, the
colors are caffeinated.
To find out more about this island’s revitalizing hues, I
contact Threads of Life, an organization working to sustain
and revive Indonesia’s spectacular weaving arts. An introduction is made to the erudite Chee Choy, who agrees to be my
guide. He takes me ten minutes north to Petulu, a tiny town
known for its wood carving, the white herons that roost in its
trees, and a dye farm, research center and studio sponsored
by The Bebali Foundation, an affiliate of Threads of Life.
The Bebali Foundation’s year-old dye garden contains
over fifty varieties, collected from all over Indonesia. Within the next year, that number will double. Head horticulturist Komang points out three kinds of indigo (Indigofera tinctoria, Indigofera suffruticosa and Strobilanthes cusia) in the
garden’s blue section. In the red section, he shows us henna,
madder and the morinda tree. There are tannin-based plants
for browns, and jackfruit, mango, turmeric and mangrove
plants for yellow. With deforestation, some of these dyestuffs
are disappearing, so part of the foundation’s
effort is aimed at teaching weavers across the
archipelago to propagate plants, manage dye
gardens and harvest sustainably.
Project director Pong explains that Bebali
is also an open air laboratory where he and
his colleagues work with dyestuffs and a variety of drying, rinsing and mordanting techniques to recover, document and redistribute
Indonesia’s traditional dye knowledge. “We
are not scientists, just passionate experimenters,” he says.
In the studio, I meet a master dyer called
Frog. He has several indigo vats in the works.
Purple bubbles are visible on the surface. The
Indigo tinctoria leaves have been soaking and
fermenting for forty-eight hours. Frog removes
the plant material and adds quicklime to separate the chlorophyll from the indican, and I
have a chance to see what his dye can do.
A piece of undyed cotton is taped to a
drawing board. I pick up a canting and fill it
halfway with hot wax. Examples of traditional batik motifs are provided, but without an
artist’s skill, I opt for abstract and let the universe guide my hand. Frog lowers my cloth
into his indigo vat, aerating it with vigorous
handling. “This ties the indican to the cloth,”
he says. The cloth is hung in the sun to dry,
then retaped to my drawing board. The universe guides my hand again. Again, the cloth
is dipped and dried. Then it is placed in boiling water with soda ash to fix it and tapioca
powder to remove the wax. Finally, it is rinsed
with rubaree (a plant in the mint family) to
make it smell better.
In the studio, I also learn about morinda,
the archipelago’s most highly valued red colorant. Every weaving community has its own
identifying shade of red. (It has been taboo to
share dye recipes.) Choy shows me a skein of
cotton that has been dyed here with morinda. The thread is a lovely auburn color, but I
suspect it will return to the dye bath several
times before Frog is satisfied. While dyeing
with morinda produces the deepest, most
sought-after reds, it is a complicated, multistep process that can take years to complete.
Chee Choy explains that only the bark of
the morinda root is used. “In the U.S., we call
it noni and use it to make a health drink,” he
says. In Indonesia, morinda is pounded to a
pulp, added to water, and mordanted with dry
leaves of the symplocos tree that have been
Top to bottom: Cotton skeins, plain on the left, oiled on the right. A piece of morinda root.
Indigo vats percolating outdoors.
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Depending on the intricacy of the pattern, the tying of a double ikat
(weavings believed to cure or prevent illness) can take up to a year.
gathered from the forest floor. The mixture is then handsqueezed to release the dye. But that is just the beginning.
A time-consuming method of fiber preparation is required
to dye cotton with morinda. For better absorption, the fiber must first be hand spun. Then it must be soaked in oil,
sometimes up to twenty times, and between each oiling it
must be dried in the shade. “This gives the dye more ‘arms’
to grab hold of the fiber,” Choy says. The communities don’t
share their oiling procedures either. Some use chicken fat,
but most use candlenut oil that has been augmented with a
mishmash of secret ingredients.
It is tea time and I am revived by two, red-belled flowers:
hibiscus. After the pistils have been removed, the blossoms
are crumpled and covered with boiling water, then a squeeze
of lime is added. This, too, makes a nice red.
The Magic Cloth of Bali Aga
A few days later, Choy takes me to another village to see
morinda and indigo in action. We travel east through rainforest and ricelands where farmers nap in tin-roofed shacks or
replenish offerings at one of the little field shrines dedicated
to Dewi Sri, goddess of grain. At the entrance to Tenganan
Village there are roosters in basket cages awaiting victory in
a cock fight or sacrifice in a temple ceremony. For either occasion, they have been dyed Bazooka pink, neon orange, and
screaming zonker yellow. Choy assures me that this is not a
bad omen, that we will indeed find cloth that has been naturally dyed.
Tenganan is home to the Bali Aga people, the island’s earliest settlers. So vigilant are they to keep their bloodline pure
that marriage to outsiders is forbidden, and foreigners (which
A weaver’s skilled hand working on a morinda cloth.
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includes the rest of the Balinese) are not allowed here after
dark. Cars are banned as well, so we are dropped at the gate
to walk up stone avenues dividing long rows of stone-walled
compounds. Most are thatched with black sugar palm fiber,
and caged songbirds hang from the eaves.
Seeing the sign for Morinda Art, we step over offerings
and enter a courtyard. Just inside the door, there is a shrine
where two durians (a prized fruit that reeks but tastes sublime) have been offered to ensure a good visit. Ibu (Mother)
Sri stands in front of it. Her torso is wrapped in a marvelous old cloth, and another is draped over her right shoulder.
These double ikat weavings are called geringsing (“no sickness”). Invested with the power to cure or prevent illness,
they are also called magic cloths.
Double ikats are woven in only three places in the world:
Patola, India; Okinawa, Japan; and Tenganan, Bali. In this
village, there are only four weavers left who can make geringsing, and Ibu Sri is one of them. She sits down at her tying
frame and gets to work on a weft. Following a template, she
picks up bundles of threads and binds them with red or blue
raffia. This will tell her which sections should resist dye and
stay natural, which should be dyed red with morinda, and
which should be overdyed with indigo to turn them black.
When she is done with the weft, she will tie off the warp.
Depending on the intricacy of the pattern and the size of
the double ikat, the tying can take up to a year. The dyeing
is only done in the dry season and can take as long as three
years. To achieve the desired hues, threads are dyed and
re-dyed, unbound and rebound again and again. “The best
weavers work with the threads their grandmothers prepared,”
Ibu Sri says.
Once the loom is warped, things pick up speed. Producing
a cloth as fine as gauze may only take a few months. After it
is taken off the loom, it is consecrated and empowered in a
ceremony. And then, like fine wine, it is put away for several
more years to age. As far as Ibu Sri is concerned, a cloth is
not ready to wear or use for at least ten years.
Ibu Sri’s son, Wayan, tells me what to look for in a finished
geringsing. He identifies the clearly defined motifs that can
protect the wearer—mandalas, chakras, ceremonial figures,
lotus flowers, butterflies, scorpions, and other signs “determined by the gods” and unnamed. Showing off his mother’s
neatly woven borders, he says, “Our weavings are containers
of magical power. All the edges, always white or black, must
be perfect so the magic does not leak out.”
It isn’t the weaving that gives geringsing its high value: it’s
the lustrous color. It is easy to see the difference between a
“young” morinda and an “old” morinda. From new to antique,
these magic cloths range in price from $2,000 to $12,000. I
know which ones I like, but my pockets are not deep enough.
Part of Life in Bali
Back with Choy at my Ubud hotel, a three-inch spider
jumps onto our table in search of a meal. We don’t kill the
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laba laba. We change tables. I have no geringsing to protect
me, and this demon in disguise should be propitiated.
The next day, I put on my factory-made sarong and sash
and proceed to temple along with hundreds of women girdled
in ceremonial ikats. On their heads, they carry fifty-pound
pyramids of offerings—dragon fruit, little pink cakes, pigs’
heads, chicken feet, money, flowers, rice—and anything else
a god might like.
We proceed through the temple gate, past fierce stone
guardians skirted and sashed with black and white checkered cloth. Inside, there is more sacred cloth. Cloth wraps
the offerings, shrines and devotees. Cloth pennants wave in
the wind to attract the gods. Cloth umbrellas stand ready to
shade the gods. Like a road to the divine, cloth flutters down
to us from the god towers. Today, there is a birthday party
for this temple, and the gods are invited to be worshipped,
wined and dined.
“Once upon a time, our women of the
loom practiced meditation in hopes
of seeing the meaning of the universe.
They asked the gods, ‘May we tell
these stories?’ The designs they
created in thread were codes for the
meaning of the universe.”
While the gods eat, we sit on the stone ground and pray.
Palms together, we clasp a frangipani blossom between our
middle fingers. After each prayer is complete, the priest rings
a little bell and we tuck the flower into our hair. Tonight, each
petition is also punctuated by thunder, and by the time we’re
done with the whole cycle, the women’s chignons are full of
flowers and the sky has opened up. Offering baskets are used
as rain hats. Under a checkered umbrella, I take shelter with
the gods and watch the astonishing eye, hand and leg movements of young dancers also swathed in sacred cloth.
Finding Meaning
For a better understanding of Bali’s sacred textile tradition,
Choy takes to the east again, past old teak houses and fields
where old women in conical hats wave cloth flags to scare
birds out of the kerneling grain. From the coastal road, we
head into the foothills of Bali’s most sacred volcano where,
in the village of Sidemen, we meet with Ibu Dayu Ngurah
Puniari.
Ibu Dayu has spent years interviewing the island’s elder
priests and weavers and scouring its secret texts and palm
leaf scriptures for information on traditional production
Photo opposite page: A special offering to the gods elegantly wrapped in silk.
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methods, usage, and the transformative powers of ritual
cloth. A revered teacher of the weaving arts and the founder of a textile cooperative, she has convinced many of Bali’s
textile artisans to return to the old dyes and the old patterns.
She supplies them with traditionally dyed fiber and design
templates and instructs them to “weave the way your grandmothers wove.”
We meet three of the coop’s expert weavers—Dayu Raka,
Dayu Anom and Dayu Oka. They are making songkets, the
traditional, supplementary-weft story cloths depicting scenes
from Hindu literature and worn by brides, grooms and royalty. Instead of a backstrap, the weavers are held to their work
by a piece of wood curved like Cupid’s bow. To create a motif, they lift warp threads, insert a pattern stick, and weave in
the weft string with their fingers. Some motifs require three
hundred to five hundred of these pattern sticks. We admire
their woven banyan trees, fire dragons, all-seeing peacocks
and a demon who ate the moon, all set against naturally dyed
grounds.
Ibu Dayu explains how Bali’s weaving traditions began.
“Once upon a time, our women of the loom practiced meditation in hopes of seeing the meaning of the universe. They
built up their spiritual strength to receive this sacred information, then asked permission of the gods, ‘May we tell
these stories?’ The designs they created in thread were codes
for the meaning of the universe.”
Next, we see Ibu Dayu’s collection of ritual cloths. Most
are supplementary-weft weavings in complex plaids and simple stripes in a variety of significant colorways. Like geringsing, they are medicinal cloths, both curative and preventive.
We are told that they have been empowered to protect, purify
and heal. They can bring joy and longevity, provide strength
or self control, increase initiative or creativity, impart humility
or discernment, make the wearer passionate and fertile. . .
“During life transitions, people are most vulnerable to evil
influences, so protective cloths are required at all our ritesof-passage ceremonies,” Ibu says.
At birth, for example, a newborn is placed on a ritual cloth
to have its umbilical cord cut. During its first year, the baby
is wrapped in cloth for ceremonial hair cutting, ear piercing
and for the moment when its feet first touch the ground. Sacred cloth is also required on half birthdays and birthdays. At
puberty, it plays an essential role in the tooth filing ceremony,
which entails grinding down six teeth that represent the six
bad behaviors and is meant to stave off teenage rebellion.
We also see textiles that are integral to marriage and death
rites. But the one that most interests me promises good
health and a calm and happy temperament for my coming
grandchild. This time I have the good sense to buy a magic
cloth.
That night, several drunk tourists wake me at 3 a.m. For
an hour, they laugh, shout and do cannonballs in the pool
outside my door. Today, the plumbing has gone to hell and a
green snake crawled up my steps and looked me in the eye.
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I report these incidents. The hotel staff tells me there were
no drunks. They hack at the garden and find no snake. “Very
strong magic in Bali,” they insist. “Black magic.”
I’m thinking it’s time for another trip to the temple. The
receptionist brings me to a special ceremony starring the barong, a hairy, lion-like creature with fangs, bulging eyes and
an I’m-going-to-eat-you expression. Sitting on either side of
the railroad tracks that run through her village, we watch the
spirits dance to expel evil, restore balance and bring blessings to us all. A train approaches then squeals to a halt and
waits out the sacred play. The energy is so strong that people in the audience fall into trances. Little boys, old women,
strong young men shout, shake and thrash. Fire is held to
their skin and they return to consciousness without possession or burns. Tonight white magic overpowers black magic,
but the Balinese know that evil will never be fully thwarted—that there will always be a need for another ceremony,
another offering and another magic cloth. wF
Threads of Life advances the work of 1,100 weavers on thirteen
Indonesian islands. To visit their fabulous Ubud gallery, or take
a class or a textile tour, visit the website at
http://threadsoflife.com/
Chee Choy holds up a skein of cotton that has been dyed with morinda.
It will likely be dyed several more times until it reaches the desired red.
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Reflections
of Bali
Photos by Torie Olson
At a water temple, a priest tidies up the
flower offerings made by devotees.
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Draped in sacred cloth, dancers enact the stories of
their Hindu gods and demons.
Bottom (from left): Drummers in batik sarongs and
headbands process to the temple.
At an all night temple ceremony, dancers are blessed
before they perform.
Carrying offerings to the temple on a full moon day.
In a god house, a temple attendant organizes colorful
offerings of fruit, rice, and skewered chicken parts.
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Right: Cloth has many ceremonial
purposes in the roofless temples.
Below: To propitiate the gods and demons,
offering trays and incense are placed
outside every shop and home.
Opposite page: Boy at prayer with
frangipani blossom.
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