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Gold Cloths of SumatraGold Cloths of Sumatra: Indonesia's Songkets from Ceremony to Community Curated by Prof. Susan Rodgers, and textile researchers Dr. Anne Summerfield and Dr. John Summerfield. Organized by Roger Hankins. Gold Cloths of Sumatra: Indonesia’s Songkets from Ceremony to Commodity is the third exhibition in a series mounted at the Cantor Art Gallery on Southeast Asian hand-loomed cloth. The exhibition offers both 19th-century and contemporary examples of one of Asia’s most spectacular traditional textiles; the songkets of the Minangkabau people of West Sumatra and the Palembang Malays of South Sumatra. Songkets are made of silk or fine cotton, interwoven with supplementary wefts of gold-wrapped thread. These shimmering textiles are worn as sarongs, shoulder cloths, and head-ties in rituals such as weddings and the installation of village chiefs. Songkets’ weavers are Muslim women and girls, however some boys and men are also weaving today. Antique gold-thread weaving from Sumatra has reached great aesthetic heights, and the craft remains a thriving, even expanding art today. This exhibition looks precisely at those elements of songket resiliency and creativity. Nowadays this ‘traditional textile’ is being robustly reworked for sale to Indonesian and Malaysian buyers, at high levels of weaving excellence. The exhibition is based on 2005-2006 fieldwork in Sumatra by Susan Rodgers, professor of anthropology at Holy Cross, and the extensive songket research of Anne and John Summerfield over the past thirty years. Susan Rodgers, Roger Hankins, Anne and John Summerfield, and Holy Cross student docents will aid in bringing the exhibition to life through gallery tours that are available upon request. For additional information, contact the Cantor Art Gallery. Related Items:
Photography for this page: Frank E. Graham
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