New Acquisition: A Palepai

Textile Arts Collection Acquires Important Indonesian Ship Cloth

The palepai (or ship cloth, as it is known to Westerners) has long been recognized as the pinnacle of Indonesian weaving. This palepai depicts two large red ships with sweeping oars and gracefully arching bowsprits and tails. The cloth is masterfully woven with finely detailed human figures, mythical creatures, birds, and ancestral shrines. The rich color palette combined with the intricate composition of the fine details makes this an exceptional example, a true masterpiece of textile design.

For Indonesians inhabiting the archipelago of 13,000 islands, the sea represents their lifeblood, and ship imagery reflects their social structure, ritual life, and cosmological belief system. The ship as a recurring theme in their ritual arts can be seen as a spirit boats safely guiding the agent from one stage in life to another. In the Lampung region of south Sumatra, ship imagery predominates their woven arts, reaching its height with the palepai, the most prestigious of all their textiles. The multi-layered or stratified decks lend itself to multiple interpretations—a representation of the upper and lower worlds, a ledger of ancestry, and a reflection of their social hierarchy.

Indonesian aristocrats, the exclusive owners of palepai, hung them at rituals such as engagements, marriages, births, circumcisions, and funerals. This cloth would have been used in a marriage ceremony, with each of the double-red ships representing each clan. In the marriage rites, a single-ship palepai would replace the double-ship cloth to symbolically represent the merging of the clans.

High-quality palepai cloths are extremely rare. In 1883, the eruption of Krakatau in the Sunda Strait generated a tsunami that destroyed 165 villages and towns, including the town of Kalianda. During the Japanese occupancy of Indonesia in World War II, many cloths were cut apart to make clothing.

The acquisition was made possible by the textile arts department support group, Textile Arts Council and the Nasaw Family Foundation gift in memory of trustee Mr. Marshall Wais Sr.

Ceremonial cloth (palepai) Indonesia, South Sumatra, Lampung, Kalianda region, 19th century. Cotton; plain weave with supplementary-weft weaving. Funded by FAMSF, Nasaw Family Foundation Fund and Textile Arts Council Endowment Fund