Exhibition Catalog

Gold Cloths of Sumatra Indonesia’s Songkets from Ceremony to Commodity

Gold Cloths

Gold Cloths of Sumatra Indonesia’s Songkets from Ceremony to Commodity
By Susan Rodgers, Anne and John Summerfield

Published in 2007 jointly by the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Art Gallery, College of the Holy Cross and the KITLV Press, the Netherlands.

ISBN 978 90 6718 3123, 137 pp., 140 color photos

Holy Cross Professor of Anthropology Susan Rodgers and textile researchers Anne and John Summerfield of Los Angeles have compiled a comprehensive volume exploring the transition of Indonesia’s ceremonial songkets into the marketplace. Gold Cloths of Sumatra offers both 19th century and contemporary examples of one of Asia’s most spectacular traditional, hand-loomed textiles: the gold-thread cloths or songkets of the Minangkabau people of West Sumatra and the Palembang Malays of South Sumatra.  Antique songkets from Minangkabau and Palembang reached perhaps unparalleled heights of weaving excellence, but the craft remains a thriving, even expanding art today.  This publication looks precisely at those elements of resiliency and deep artistic creativity in songkets, from many regions of Sumatra.


To order a copy of the catalog, please send $38 (postage and handling included) to the address listed below. Checks should be made payable to the "College of the Holy Cross."

Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Art Gallery
College of the Holy Cross
1 College Street
Worcester, MA 01610-2395