tribaltextiles.info

I am posting these few tubeskirts because they are a little different to the type that you normally see. I am wondering if forum members have similar pieces or information about them.

I assume they are Iban or a closely related group (?), probably from the Kalimantan side of the border. The "usual" kind of tubeskirt that is illustrated in publications has all-over ikat designs, with some narrow stripes at the edges only. There are some of these in older threads in this forum that have this kind of skirt, eg:


These skirts seem to be mostly made of commercial cotton, with natural dyes used for the ikat parts and some commercially dyed cotton used in the border stripes.

Grateful for any thoughts or info!

Chris

Chris - very handsome pieces. I believe that these ikatted skirts -kain kebat - are in fact Iban from Sarawak. I am posting a similar one I got from a dealer in Kuching and also one I found on ebay. The first is somewhat like yours in style and the second is sort of transitional in a sense. I have another almost exactly like the last but not so well ikatted.

I suspect that there are, or were, quite a few of your style but while quite handsome, probably not so much preferred by collectors in favor of the more graphic ones of figures on backgrounds.

And while my second one of the "arrows" is a three repeat pattern, meaning the weaver folded the warp threads accordian style into three layers before ikatting, the first will take some close study to see how many repeats there are. The same is true for yours.

I am not sure but I think some like yours are shown in one of Edric Ong's books. I'll check when I get back home.

Nice skirts. What else do you have?

Thanks for the reply, John. That second tubeskirt is very lovely indeed. Less is more.

I think you are right that these are relatively common, though less collected than the all-over-ikat variety. Presumably the ikat for the bands can all be tied at once, more quickly than the more elaborate kinds.

My collection of Iban(ic) ikat is not large. But here are 3 more tubeskirts of a more "conventional" kind.

I have added dimensions to these and those I posted previously. There is some variation in size and format. Are smaller skirts older, or from different subgroups, I wonder?