Weaving spindle

Impeccably decorated with fluid designs that are inspired by flourishing plant-like forms, this spindle is a perfect complement to the Iban textiles that are an important component of our Island S.E. Asian textile collection. For the Iban, woven cloth such as pua kumbu are considered sacred textiles and hold great power. Made with natural dye and painstakingly handwoven, ritually significant textiles such as pua kumbu are richly decorated and used for ceremonial occasions such as births, marriages, funerals and healing rites. While Iban men earned their reputations through hunting, the women followed a parallel route to social prominence by way of the complex highly ritualized practice of tying, dying and weaving pua kumbu, the ceremonial cloth of the Iban tribe. The decorative motifs and iconography were inspired by dreams: these include motifs that are deemed to be “safe,” such as vines, creepers, plants and trees, as well as more powerful motifs such as demons, spirit figures or animal totem figures like crocodiles and snakes which were were deemed to have their own agency and power. Originally used to receive the heads into the longhouses when the men returned from a hunt, textiles such as pua kumbu were also used in the tribe’s important celebrations, from marking births, deaths and marriages to agricultural ceremonies. Knowledge of the meticulous processes involved was passed down from the women of one generation to another, and a girl learning the art would copy the simplest designs of her ancestors.

The culture and spirituality of the Iban people is interwoven with the natural environment of Borneo, an island the Iban have inhabited for many generations. The genre of pua is the woven textile most readily associated with the Iban. The dyeing and preparation of textiles is highly ritualized in Iban society and the finished textiles–with their figurative motifs–are used to convey cultural and spiritual teachings. In this respect, both the process and the finished cloth are among the Iban’s most cherished cultural practices.