CONTENTS 2 Editorial Sarawak Craft Council 3 ... - CraftHub

MAT-MAKING AND BASKETRY
Maridontreks
CRAFTHUB PRESENTS...
THE BEST OF SARAWAK CRAFTS
Mat-making and basketry are skills known to every Borneo society. The rainforest
abounds in suitable raw materials: reeds, leaves, barks or rinds. These everrenewable
fibres were fashioned into mats and baskets for everyday use; until the
early 20 th century few longhouse dwellers had furniture other than maybe a storage
chest inside their family rooms. Sitting, eating, sleeping was done on the floor, on
mats.
One fast-growing plant found mostly in the brackish coastal swamps, Pandanus
spp., is a very popular mat-making material which can be processed into a soft,
pliable mat.
Besides spreading them for sitting and sleeping on, pandan mats were generally
used to wrap articles, to make temporary awnings or rain shelters, to quickly run up
an interior wall in a house, to cover the slimy floorboards of a boat if important
passengers were expected. Pandan mats were used as sails for small coastal craft
too; cheaper than canvas, not nearly as durable.
One of the most versatile rainforest products, the climbing palm known as Malacca
Cane or rattan (rotan, Calamus spp.), is used to make baskets of every kind: strong
carrying baskets, storage containers, and elegant small containers for a lady’s
personal belongings. The latter type is made of the shiny rattan skin, cut into fine
working strips.
Rattan is also used to make mats. The Penan people, until recently a nomadic
group roaming the hilly regions of Sarawak’s interior, made a mat that resembles
the Iban product but is actually plaited of finely stripped rattan skin. To enhance the
effect of the decorative patterns, part of the working material is stained black. Today other colours are used, but the classic Penan mat
is intricately figured in black and white. Legend has it that some Penan mats are so densely worked that they can be used to carry water
over short distances.
The Orang Ulu make a very solid mat by threading lengths of whole or halved rattan canes side by
side This type of mat, the tikar lampit, is quite rigid, not really suitable for sleeping on and certainly
not for wrapping things; it can only be rolled up. The ends of this tikar lampit are bruised and teased
to expose some free fibre, which is plaited to make a strong edge; modern variants of this mat have
plastic braiding stitched all round.
Sarawak’s mat-makers are women – almost all of them anyway. One type of sturdy floor mat, spread
out to reinforce the sometimes fragile longhouse floor when large numbers of visitors are expected,
is inevitably made by men.
The Bidayuh fashion a heavy-duty mat which is worked at right angles, in principle like weaving, of
split rattan canes as a warp, and inch-wide strips of bark cloth as a weft. These mats are meant to be
useful, not beautiful, though a neatly worked and finished tikar kelasah is a handsome floor covering
in the right place.
Besides strengthening the floor in crowd situations, this mat is put to many everyday uses such as
drying agricultural produce on the longhouse verandah. It is the sitting-mat of choice for outdoor
ceremonies and picnics, when a finer mat might get spoiled by contact with the damp ground.
Changing lifestyles make mats and baskets redundant for many Malaysians; the new status symbols are a piece of linoleum or carpet
on the floor, a designer handbag, and plastic for everything. Part of the mat-maker’s craft survives thanks to the tourist market, even if
full-sized sleeping mats are not suitable as souvenirs.
A number of young Sarawakian designers are pioneering new uses of an old skill: dinner mats, table runners, whole table covers, wall
hangings, even pillows with mat-woven insets are new applications of the mat fabric, in new, adapted shapes.
A modern taste for rattan furniture and interior decorations made of reed or cane will help to take the skill of centuries into the third
millennium.
12
Photo: Heidi Munan