RAMA, RAJAS AND COURTESANS: INDIAN FIGURATIVE TEXTILES IN INDONESIA
Speaker: John Guy

The largest body of early Indian trade textiles found in Indonesia is a group of wide-loomed coarse cotton cloths painted (kalamkari) with figurative and landscape designs. They are distinctive for a number of reasons, not least because of a shared interest in designs that feature figurative elements in a narrative relief, often with multiple registers. The apparent popularity of these designs is at once both surprising and mystifying, viewed in the context of indigenous textile traditions which display a propensity for recurring geometric patterns arranged within carefully defined design structures. These early imports, which consistently provide radiocarbon-14 dates to the late 14^th and 15^th centuries, are an anomaly both in terms of what we know about early Indonesian textile practices and the later woven and dyed traditions. Unlike Gujarati silk patola - the influence of which reverberated throughout both island and mainland Southeast Asia - these rather grand figurative and landscape designs had no lasting impact on local design. These spectacular cloths were valued for their exotic nature and role as status markers and were carefully preserved as prized heirloom objects. They were also ascribed supernatural origins and powers, entering local mythologies and cosmogonies. That was all, unlike other Indian painted cloths which had a pervasive and lasting impact on indigenous Indonesian textile designs, most especially on Javanese batik.

In this paper, John Guy presents the repertoire of Indian painted cotton figurative textiles found in Indonesia, examines their origins and place in the medieval Indian Asian cloth trade, and assesses their significance for the Indonesian communities who acquired and preserved them.

Introducing
JOHN GUY

John Guy, M.A, F.S.A., is Senior Curator for South and Southeast Asian Art at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. His research interests focus on Indian temple arts and India's cultural relations with Southeast Asia in the fields of sculpture and textiles. He has worked on a number of archaeological excavations, at both land and maritime sites, and served as an advisor to UNESCO on historical sites in Southeast Asia. He has curated and co-curated a number of exhibitions, including The Peaceful Liberators. Jain Art from India (1995), Unseen Indian Bronzes (2000) and contributed to others, most recently Vietnam Art and Culture (Brussels, 2003), Encounters: the Meeting of East and West (V&A, 2004) and La sculpture du Champa (Paris, 2005-6). Major publications include Oriental Trade Ceramics in South East Asia (1986), Ceramic Traditions of Southeast Asia (1989), Indian Art and Connoisseurship (1995), Vietnamese Ceramics: A Separate Tradition (1997) and Woven Cargoes. Indian Textiles in the East (1998). He guest edited a special number of Arts of Asia (2002) on Asian textiles in the V&A.