Embroidery is the craft of decorating fabric or other materials using a needle to apply thread or yarn. Embroidery may also incorporate other materials such as pearls, beads, quills, and sequins. In modern days, embroidery is usually seen on caps, hats, coats, overlays, blankets, dress shirts, denim, dresses, stockings, and golf shirts. Embroidery is available in a wide variety of thread or yarn colour.
Lampung, officially the Province of Lampung is a province of Indonesia. It is located on the southern tip of the island of Sumatra. It has a short border with the province of Bengkulu to the northwest, and a longer border with the province of South Sumatra to the north. It is the original home of the Lampung people, who speak their own language, and possess their own written script. Its capital is Bandar Lampung.
Ikat is a dyeing technique originating from Indonesia used to pattern textiles that employs resist dyeing on the yarns prior to dyeing and weaving the fabric.
A sarong or sarung is a large tube or length of fabric, often wrapped around the waist, worn in Southeast Asia, South Asia, Western Asia, Northern Africa, East Africa, West Africa, and on many Pacific islands. The fabric often has woven plaid or checkered patterns, or may be brightly colored by means of batik or ikat dyeing. Many modern sarongs have printed designs, often depicting animals or plants. Different types of sarongs are worn in different places in the world, notably the lungi in the Indian subcontinent and the izaar in the Arabian Peninsula.
The culture of Indonesia has been shaped by long interaction between original indigenous customs and multiple foreign influences. Indonesia is centrally-located along ancient trading routes between the Far East, South Asia and the Middle East, resulting in many cultural practices being strongly influenced by a multitude of religions, including Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, and Islam, all strong in the major trading cities. The result is a complex cultural mixture, often different from the original indigenous cultures.
A kebaya is an upper garment traditionally worn by women in Southeast Asia, notably in Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, and Singapore. Outside of Southeast Asia, it is worn by Javanese, Malays and Portuguese Eurasians in Australian Cocos Islands and Christmas Island, coastal India and Sri Lanka, Macau as well as South Africa.
Songket is a Tenun fabric that belongs to the brocade family of textiles of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. It is hand-woven in silk or cotton, and intricately patterned with gold or silver threads. The metallic threads stand out against the background cloth to create a shimmering effect. In the weaving process the metallic threads are inserted in between the silk or cotton weft (latitudinal) threads in a technique called supplementary weft weaving technique.
A sampot, a long, rectangular cloth worn around the lower body, is a traditional dress in Cambodia. It can be draped and folded in several different ways. The traditional dress is similar to the dhoti of Southern Asia. It is also worn in the neighboring countries of Laos and Thailand where it is known as pha nung.
In embroidery, couching and laid work are techniques in which yarn or other materials are laid across the surface of the ground fabric and fastened in place with small stitches of the same or a different yarn.
Goldwork is the art of embroidery using metal threads. It is particularly prized for the way light plays on it. The term "goldwork" is used even when the threads are imitation gold, silver, or copper. The metal wires used to make the threads have never been entirely gold; they have always been gold-coated silver or cheaper metals, and even then the "gold" often contains a very low percent of real gold. Most metal threads are available in silver and sometimes copper as well as gold; some are available in colors as well.
In needlework, a slip is a design representing a cutting or specimen of a plant, usually with flowers or fruit and leaves on a stem. Most often, slip refers to a plant design stitched in canvaswork (pettipoint), cut out, and applied to a woven background fabric. By extension, slip may also mean any embroidered or canvaswork motif, floral or not, mounted to fabric in this way.
Baju Kurung is a traditional costume of Malays and traditionally worn by women in Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and southern Thailand. This type of traditional costume is the national dress of Brunei and Malaysia. In Indonesia, it is also one of the regional dresses, seen most on the island of Sumatra, where many ethnic Malay and Minangkabau women wear it.
The national costume of Indonesia is the national costume that represents the Republic of Indonesia. It is derived from Indonesian culture and Indonesian traditional textile traditions. Today the most widely recognized Indonesian national costumes include batik and kebaya, although originally those costumes mainly belong within the island of Java and Bali, most prominently within Javanese, Sundanese and Balinese culture. Since Java has been the political and population center of Indonesia, folk costume from the island has become elevated into national status.
Described by generations of foreign ethnographers and collectors as "ship cloths" because of the predominance of a ship motif, they were said to represent the "ship of the dead." In Sumatra these cloths are also called sesai balak. No convincing field data were ever collected from 19th century weavers or traditional owners about the iconography. Since then, there has been great loss of Lampung traditional knowledge. The history of these ships cloth is obscure and the reasons for both their original use and their decline remain conjectural.. The factors that are presumed to have caused this include the abolition of slavery in 1859, the decline in the pepper trade and changing marriage traditions. Two lesser known forms are the tatibin and the tampan maju. The tatibin are similar in design to the single ship palepai but are smaller, not exceeding 1.5 M. The tampan maju beaded and also shorter than the large cloths. Only 12 examples of tampan maju are known to exist.
Balinese textiles are reflective of the historical traditions of Bali, Indonesia. Bali has been historically linked to the major courts of Java before the 10th century; and following the defeat of the Majapahit kingdom, many of the Javanese aristocracy fled to Bali and the traditions were continued. Bali therefore may be seen as a repository not only of its own arts but those of Java in the pre-Islamic 15th century. Any attempt to definitively describe Balinese textiles and their use is doomed to be incomplete. The use of textile is a living tradition and so is in constant change. It will also vary from one district to another. For the most part old cloth are not venerated for their age. New is much better. In the tropics cloth rapidly deteriorates and so virtue is generated by replacing them.
Geringsing is a Tenun textile created by the double ikat method in the Bali Aga village of Tenganan Pegeringsingan in Bali. The demanding technique is only practiced in parts of India, Japan and Indonesia. In Indonesia it is confined to the village of Tenganan.
The textiles of Sumba, an island in eastern Indonesia, represent the means by which the present generation passes on its messages to future generations. Sumbanese textiles are deeply personal; they follow a distinct systematic form but also show the individuality of the weavers and the villages where they are produced. Internationally, Sumbanese textiles are collected as examples of textile designs of the highest quality and are found in major museums around the world, as well as in the homes of collectors.
This large, mid-19th century Moroccan wall hanging, or haiti, is a highlight of the textile collection of the Indianapolis Museum of Art, which is in Indianapolis, Indiana. Made in the cultural center of Fez, it is crafted of the finest materials: silk velvet embroidered with gold metallic thread.
Embroidery was an important art in the Islamic world from the beginning of Islam until the Industrial Revolution disrupted traditional ways of life.
Tenun is an artful native Indonesians technique of making a fabric by weaving different colours of threads. Tenun belongs to one of the typical Indonesian cultural arts produced by hand skills using very simple or traditional looms. The word Tenun itself has a high meaning, historical value, and technique in terms of colors, motifs, and types of materials and threads used and each region has its own characteristics. In addition, tenun is also one of Indonesia's original cultural heritages that is still maintained and preserved to this day.
