The process of making ikats
Spinning...the start of it all
One of the most fundamental skills required to produce a high quality ikat, is spinning. The thread produced (by means of a gravity or drop-weight spindle) is called "benang putar", and textiles made of it are generally highly appreciated, both by locals and by collectors. The evenness of thread that an experienced spinner can achieve with a spindle is stunning. Yet one can always feel the difference between commercial, factory made yarns and hand spun yarns by passing it through the fingers and paying attention to the minute differences in thickness that betray the old handwork.
Bindings that resist liquid are placed before each dye bath
The ikat process properly begins with the warp threads being strung up on the loom, close together and properly tightened.
Bindings that resist dye penetration are applied to narrower or wider bundles of threads. In most parts of Indonesia these bindings are traditionally made of strips of palm or pandan leaf, raffia, or other plant material, which in some regions such as Borneo may be waxed with beeswax to improve impregnability. These days plastic is also used, allowing greater definition.
Dyeing
Once the bindings required to protect all material that should not be coloured in the first round of dyeing are in place, the threads are taken off the loom and immersed in the dye bath. If the pigment is of a kind that does not spontaneously penetrate and adhere to the fibre, such as morinda, they are first soaked in a mordant, then dyed. Indigo, is an ideal pigment to work with, as it adheres to cotton naturally, and is fully colourfast.
After drying, the bindings are cut away (see video), the threads are strung onto the loom again and arranged carefully so that they match exactly, and new bindings are put in place for all locations that should not receive colour in the second round of dying. Then the tied threads are taken off the loom again, immersed in the next dye bath - and so on until the desired multicoloured pattern has been created. The duration of the soaking of the threads in the dye bath varies from a day to several weeks. In many regions a particular dye bath may be repeated numerous times to achieve the desired intensity. A common technique to achieve more colour variation with a limited number of pigments is overdyeing, once or several times with bindings at different locations.
Arranging died warp threads on the loom
When the dyeing process is finished - which, because of ritual prescriptions, scarcity of material, or the need for multiple immersions in the mordant may take months or even years - the last bindings are removed and the threads are ready to be woven into cloth. The first step is to arrange the warp threads on the loom once again, taking great care to align them properly, so that the pattern comes out clear, well defined (see video). Next to the intensity of the colouration, the clarity of the pattern is the most important indicator of craftsmanship. In warp ikat the patterns are clearly visible in the warp threads on the loom even before the plain coloured weft is introduced to produce the fabric. In weft ikat it is the weaving or weft thread that carries the dyed patterns which only appear as the weaving proceeds. In weft ikat the weaving proceeds much slower than in warp ikat as the passes of the weft must be carefully adjusted to maintain the clarity of the patterns. In double ikat both warp and the weft are resist-dyed prior to stringing on the loom.
Finally... weaving!
For the weaving of ikat cloth, traditionally, and still commonly, a backstrap loom is used, as below though in principle any variant or modern loom might be used. The textiles in our collection have all been made in the traditional manner. The backstrap loom has been in widespread use in many parts of South and Southeast Asia since times immemorial. They are easy to construct from materials that readily available in the natural environment. The warp threads are attached to two parallel wooden bars or sticks, one of which is either tied to stakes in the ground, or, in its most primitive form, held behind the feet of the weaver, and the other is attached to a belt around the weaver's waist. This setup allows the weaver to relax or tighten the warp threads by a slight movement of the body either forwards, so as to facilitate the opening of the shed and the insertion of weft threads, or backwards to straighten out the cloth for inspection and adjustment of the thread alignment. Backstrap looms come with an inherent limitation of width, namely the span of the weaver's arms.
