The pagan tribes of Borneo - Get a Free Blog Here

HANDICRAFTS 197
Other implements fashioned by the smiths are
the small knives, spear-heads, hoes, small adzes, rods
for boring the sumpitan, the anvil, and the various
hammers, and chisels, and rough files used by the
smiths.
Brass-work
Although brass-ware is so highly valued by all
the peoples of the interior, the only brazen articles
made by them (with one exception presently to be
noticed) are the heavy ear-rings of the women. The
common form is a simple ring of solid metal interrupted
at one point by a gap about an eighth of
an inch wide, through which is pulled the thin band
of skin formed by stretching the lobule of the ear.
Other rings form about one and a half turns of a
corkscrew spiral. These rings are cast in moulds
of clay, or in some cases in moulds hollowed in two
blocks of stone which are nicely opposed.
The Malohs, a Klemantan sub-tribe in the upper
basin of the Kapuas river, are well known as brassworkers
; their wares are bartered throughout the
country, and a few Maloh brass-workers may be
found temporarily settled in many of the larger
villages of all tribes. They make the brass corsets
of the Iban women, tweezers for pulling out the hair
of the face, brass ear-rings, and a variety of small
articles, and they make use of the larger brass-ware
of Malay and Chinese origin as the source of their
material.
Fire Piston
This very ingenious instrument for the making
of fire is cast in metal by the Ibans. (See Fig. 36
and PI. 108.) It consists of a hollow brass or leaden
cylinder about five inches in length and one inch in
diameter, the bore being about one-quarter of an
inch in diameter and closed at one end. A wooden