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The purpose of this thread is to have an avenue where I can share my thoughts and put on record bits and bobs of information swirling in my head, and invite comments and response from the reader.
I do not pretend to be an authority, nor do I insist on being right; but I do have the credentials of being an Iban born into a family of weavers, and who has also spent time in the field learning from and interacting with weavers.
In order to truly understand Iban weaving, one must first truly understand the weaver and how she thinks and why she thinks the way she does. The Iban weaver’s mind is a complex place and the first challenge of any student or researcher of Iban weaving is to access this complex mind without being intrusive or invasive.
First, let us agree on a loose classification (and I frown at using the term because it is never a good thing to be rigid with categories) of the types of weavers:
1. The career weaver.
2. The wife-mother weaver.
3. The peer-pressured weaver.
The career weaver, for want of a better term, is someone who embarks on a journey to become the archetypal Iban woman. She is versed in oral literature and history, deft with the thread, nimble with the rattan strips, guardian of the old wisdom of all things feminine (including being a midwife), leads rituals and ceremonies, and in essence, the ‘go-to’ woman of her community or longhouse. Almost always, she comes from an affluent family and has the luxury of time to spend her days and nights weaving. She will have others to care for her household and children. She would be an acknowledged master-weaver when she reaches her forties – at the prime and pinnacle of her career, well before menopause, and would have woven entire repertoires of designs. She would command great respect from the entire community and her fame would travel far and wide. Such a career weaver is rare. Out of ten weavers, perhaps only one or two would match this description.
The wife-mother weaver, unlike the career weaver, is a full-time housekeeper, farmer, mother and wife. Weaving is a luxury, but being an industrious Iban woman who does not want to bring disrepute to her family, will insist on making time to weave. Only after she has returned from the farm, cleaned the children and the home, and cooked the evening meal would she then retire to her space, often the cloistered attic or sometimes the airy spaciousness of the open communal gallery to weave, with whatever daylight is left of the setting sun. An hour would pass and then she would light her lamp and weave by lamp-light till it is time to set up the mosquito nets and tuck the children into bed. Her weavings would include baskets, mats, textiles for ceremonial wear and the great pua kumbu – her very own statement as a woman of substance. Only after the children are grown and she is post-menopause would she then embark on refining her craft and attempt the more demanding designs which would appear on cloths of larger sizes. Still, she would not be acknowledged as a master-weaver but respected as a good weaver. Out of ten weavers, about five to six would be wife-mother weavers; industrious, respectable and have some repute as accomplished weavers.
The peer-pressured weaver is essentially someone who comes from an affluent family, or a family of weavers, and is expected to weave because it is the norm. She would begin her weaving career as in No.1 and after marriage, would retrogress to No.2 and after completing at least five great pua kumbu, would quietly retire. Out of ten weavers, three to four would fall into this category. There is no shame in being a peer-pressured weaver as she has proven that she can weave and has woven the pre-requisite textiles for her household. She has simply chosen not to make weaving the focus of her life.
Then there is the non-weaver. Either she is too poor to afford bought threads or find time to cultivate, harvest, process and spin her own yarns besides farming the land, or conversely, she is burdened as being the wife of a man of some standing in the community whom would have to entertain visitors regularly and at the same time she would have to care for her many children and guests. She would still know how to weave baskets and mats but her skill would end there. She would make a name for herself by being a good hostess, a fine cook and raise well-mannered children, and have a plentiful harvest of rice every season. She would also be invited by relatives and friends to share her skills in preparing feasts and in divulging her secret recipe for the best rice wine. Such a woman, however, is not deemed spiritually mature to participate in rituals or have an opinion on such matters. She is the silent observer who only supports with the attending feast that follows rituals.
Now that we have identified more or less three types of weavers, we look at how these weavers operate within the framework of their daily lives, taking the example of creating the great pua kumbu.
The career weaver who cultivates, harvests, processes and spins her own threads would take about one cycle of moon (a month) to prepare her yarns to the stage of being ready for knotting, working night and day. The career weaver who buys her threads would take half the time to prepare her yarn to the same stage. After the yarn has been treated and taken the dew and the sun, which is another 14 days, the career weaver then begins the process of laying out the warp on the weaving loom and measuring the width of the eventual cloth, which takes just under six hours. Then, the consolidated warps would then be taken off the weaving loom and stretched taut on the knotting loom. The following day, she would begin the vital process of knotting and creating the design of her great pua kumbu. This is the most important stage in the entire process – both mentally (designing the cloth from memory or from sheer thought) and spiritually as she enters unknown territory. Ergo, she must be on her extreme guard not to transgress any strictures, conventions or cause offence in any way. This is the reason why this stage of the weaving process is often done in solitude in an attic or a separate space in the apartment of the longhouse. Working night and day and depending on the design she is creating, this process may take another cycle of the moon. If the career weaver is to encounter a bad omen during this stage, she will have to unknot her warps and start all over again, or unknot the offending motif and rest for a week whilst making the appropriate propitiations. Once completed, the warp threads receive their first dye. Dyeing and drying is repeated until the desired colour has been accomplished – normally three to four days. Then the second knotting begins. This technically easy stage is fraught with pitfalls for the novice. Knot the very tight but wrong spaces in between the first knots and you mar the design. Most career weavers take about two weeks to finish this stage before the fully knotted warp threads receive their second dye. Once this is done, the career weaver then immediately begins the ‘fun’ process of putting the weft to warp on the weaving loom. (I use the term ‘fun’ because much of the engagement with the spiritual has been accomplished, and all that is left is for the cloth to be woven. In the next posting, I will show an example of how this stage can be extremely ‘fun’!) Career weavers take between one to two weeks to complete this process, working night and day, depending on the size of the cloth. The entire process would take about 80 to 90 days. Assuming the career weaver works twelve hours a day (or more), the total amount of man hours invested into a cloth would exceed one thousand hours.
The crux of my point thus far is that a career weaver, working night and day without disruption, who has invested over a thousand hours into a very physically laborious, mentally challenging and spiritually (ergo, psychologically) formidable activity would not create designs of innocuous flora, harmless fauna and other bits and bobs she sees around her.
Commentators have argued, at times rather convincingly, like Haddon and Start did, that weavers create designs based on their world-view. I do not disagree. However, I would like to invite the reader to consider the proposal that besides a weaver’s world-view, there is also the weaver’s spirit-view. Surely an intelligent mind that can grasp the technology of measuring out complex warp calculations, negotiate intricate principles of positive and negative knotting and then mix the various shades of dyes to arrive at the perfect blend would also be able to comprehend, create and memorise a plethora of motifs, symbols and designs that would embody, reflect and represent the weaver’s spirit-view? To deny such a suggestion would be akin to applauding the weaver’s technical skill yet rendering her a primitive artist without so much as a thought to what she weaves and why she weaves it.
As for the wife-mother weaver, the time she would invest in a great pua kumbu would be almost triple that of the career weaver, having probably only four to five hours a day to work on her threads. Would such a weaver, spending thousands of hours on one piece of cloth – most likely an entire year, waste her energies, both physical and spiritual, on doodles, cartoons and meaningless curves and lines during the pivotal stage of knotting the design? Some commentators have suggested so.
Nevertheless, the logical mind of the Iban weaver operates on a different level altogether. It is this complex yet quite logical mind that I wish to explore and share, and I hope this thread will be helpful for the reader who wishes to understand the logic of the Iban weaver.
(May I request that no part of my writing or the information contained in this thread be published without my expressed permission. All rights reserved. Thank you.)
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