BARK CLOTH SKIRTS FROM THE KENDAWANGAN AND MEMBULUH RIVERS IN SOUTHWESTERN BORNEO
Speaker: Roy W. Hamilton

In 1908 Dr. William Louis Abbott traveled up the Kendawangan and Membuluh rivers to collect ethnographic materials for the U.S. National Museum (now the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution). Among the items he collected was a group of 31 highly unusual bark cloth skirts intended as women’s ceremonial wear. On some of the skirts, striking patterns were created by appliqué with contrasting colors of bark cloth. Others have complex patterns executed in a waxy red-brown pigment; how this was applied was not clear from the records Abbott made at the time the skirts were collected.

Today these skirts constitute an extremely rare record of a long-abandoned tradition. Surviving examples in other collections, housed in European museums, can be counted on the fingers of a single hand. In 1994, Professor Roy Hamilton conducted field research in the villages where Abbott collected the skirts to find out what could be learned about them. Although no living person was familiar with the specific style of skirt that Abbott collected, he was able to learn how more recent types of ceremonial skirts (obviously the antecedents of Abbott’s skirts) were used. Professor Hamilton was also able to document the unusual procedure for applying the red-brown pigment, which has continued in use for the making of bark cloth headbands.

Introducing
ROY W. HAMILTON

Roy W. Hamilton is Curator for Asian and Pacific Collections at the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History. He is the principal author of The Art of Rice: Spirit and Sustenance in Asia (2003), From the Rainbow’s Varied Hue: Textiles of the Southern Philippines (1998), and Gift of the Cotton Maiden: Textiles of Flores and the Solor Islands (1994). At the Fowler Museum, he has overseen the development of nearly twenty exhibitions on Asian and Pacific subjects. He is currently working on a book, to be co-edited by B. Lynne Milgram, on contemporary issues of bast fiber weaving and cultural preservation in eastern Asia and the western Pacific.