ART AND THE ARTIST

THE PLASTIC ARTS IN MODERN BALI

In contrast are the lavish taste, labour, and money spent on their objects of luxury: their temples and musical instruments, their jewellery and textiles worn on ceremonial occasions, their weapons, and so forth. Their love of display often goes to extremes, as in the case of the costly towers, biers, and other accessories for the cremation of their dead, which are destroyed in a few minutes after hundreds of guilders and months of labour are spent to produce them.

I have mentioned the gringsing cloth, the scarfs from Tenganan, which are one of the rare examples in the world of the art of " double " ikat - that in which both the warp and the weft of the cloth are patterned by the elaborate process of dyeing only sections of the threads before weaving by binding them with fibres, the designs of both being made to fit afterwards when the scarf is woven.

The ikat process is characteristic of Indonesians, although today the laborious double ikats are made only in Tenganan in Bali. Single ikats in cotton - those in which only the warp is previously patterned - are still made in Nusa Penida and in Mas, but in Klungkung they make " ikated " silks of amazingly elaborate patterns.

Klungkung is also famous for its brocades (sungket) in red silk with woven designs in gold and silver thread. The Balinese often decorate pieces of silk by the tie-and-dye process (plangi) ; the fabric is knotted tightly in certain places and dipped in the dyes so that when the knots are loosened, a regular pattern results, leaving uncoloured patches where the dye could not penetrate. Interesting also are the striped and chequered cloths in cotton and silk made all over the island, some of which are very popular, and the open-work scarfs (kamben tjerik) worn by the women around the breasts for feasts.

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