FEATURE 126 By Jonathan Fogel and Bernard Sellato Plaitwork has long been seen as existing in a world of its own. Its emergence in the course of world history as one of the oldest non-lithic crafts—probably second only to cordage and netting (Adovasio 1977)—reaches back more than 10,000 years to when human groups began settling down and farming (Sentance 2001). For millennia, this “humblest of crafts” was employed to produce functional objects that featured in all aspects of daily life. Despite such age and significance, Western scholarship has given relatively little attention to this ancient craft in general—and to Southeast Asian examples in particular. Captain James Cook’s expedition journals mention baskets “in a thousand different designs” used for “multifarious purposes,” but not a single specimen was collected, as Bryan Sentance notes. Sentance (2001) goes on to suggest that this may have been because basket making was considered women’s work. Although the literature on Indonesian “arts and crafts” has been developing for nearly 200 years, for whatever reason much of it hardly represents plaitwork and basketry, and when it does they are often mentioned only in passing, as in the catalogs of many of the major Western exhibitions on Indonesian culture. This, we believe, has much to do with the perishable nature of the materials used, as well as with the status of basketry in Western perception, where it is viewed as “craft” as opposed to “art.” Borneo arguably is home to the world’s richest, most diverse, sophisticated, and aesthetically appealing plaitwork traditions. These derive both from the island’s complex cultural history and from its many people’s respective creativity and ingenuity. The roots of Borneo’s plaitwork traditions and the successive outside influences that fashioned them must be viewed in the broader insular Southeast Asian historical context dating from the earliest Austronesian settlement of the island c. 2500 BC (Sellato 1992, Bléhaut 1997, Heppell 2005). Within Borneo’s rich plaitwork history is a fascinating but little-documented tradition of mat making by the indigenous peoples of the island’s interior. Such mats take a variety of forms and vary considerably from group to group. They can be used for basic floorcovering, for sitting, for sleeping, and for ritual purposes. Some are subtle but beautiful compositions of interlocking geometric patterns and others are just a relatively simple checkerboard. Still others are elaborate figurative compositions that hint at mysterious narratives. While there is some overlap, sleeping and ritual mats generally tend to be the FIG. 1: Map of Borneo showing only the ethnic groups mentioned in this article. Plaited Arts from the Borneo Rainforest identifies 105 distinct groups. Cartography by Alex Copeland, www.PolarisCartography.com. Decorated Mats OF THE PEOPLES OF THE BORNEO HINTERLAND
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