Songket

What is Songket?

Songket is a hand-woven cloth of the brocade family, made in Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia. Silk or cotton forms the ground, and gold or silver thread is worked into it so the pattern sits proud of the surface and catches the light. The cloth belongs to the region's tenun, its woven textiles, and it is worn wrapped: as a sarong round the body, as a cloth over the shoulder, or as a head tie, with a folded songket headdress called a tanjak for men. Weaving was traditionally women's work, though men weave it too now. It feels like a cloth made deliberately precious, and it is kept for ceremonies rather than ordinary days.

Where does Songket come from?

Songket is usually linked to Srivijaya, the trading empire that held Sumatra from roughly the 7th to the 13th century, and Palembang, believed to have been its capital, is still the best-known centre. Carved cloth on statues at the Bumiayu temple complex in South Sumatra, including a lepus motif on one figure's vest, points to the cloth being known there in the 8th or 9th century, worn by nobles. A Palembang story credits Chinese traders with bringing silk and Indian or Middle Eastern traders with bringing gold, the two arrivals together producing songket. Kelantan tradition places the technique's arrival from the Cambodia-Siam side, reaching Pattani and then Kelantan and Terengganu by the 16th century. Others argue for China, or for the old kingdom of Langkasuka. The record is patchy, and the sources say so.

How is Songket made?

The loom work is the heart of it. A ground of silk or cotton is woven, and as the cloth grows the weaver hooks up a small group of the crosswise weft threads and slips gold or silver thread beneath them. This is supplementary weft: the metal sits on top of the ground weave rather than forming it. Each motif is built during weaving, not printed or stitched on afterwards, and the name itself comes from a Malay word for hooking. Gold thread was once wound over real gold leaf, and that cost kept production in wealthy kingdoms. Most songket now uses artificial metal thread made of nylon; a few pieces still use real gold and are kept as pusaka, family heirlooms.

Colours, motifs and borders

The metal pattern stands out against a plain ground and shifts as the wearer moves. Motifs named in the sources include lepus, a design carried on since about the 9th century, and bunga bintang or star flower, seen carved on 13th-century Javanese temple figures. Minangkabau pieces show bamboo sprouts in the lower part of the cloth. Red is the traditional colour. Motifs could also mark rank: in Palembang, lepus was kept for bangsawan, the nobility, and certain patterns told a widow's marital status.

How Songket is worn

Songket is worn wrapped, not stitched into a fixed garment. A length serves as a sarong round the waist and legs, a selendang over the shoulder, or a head tie, and men's ceremonial dress includes the tanjak, a folded headdress made of songket. In Brunei it has formed part of the fixed court dress of royalty since the reign of Omar Ali Saifuddien III. Wedding costumes for Palembangese, Minangkabau and Balinese couples include songket as a required piece.

When Songket is worn

The cloth is kept for special days: weddings, religious festivals and traditional social functions. Brides and grooms wear it as part of their wedding dress in several communities. Beyond the ceremony it works as a marker of who the wearer is. In old Palembang a widow wore a striking songket selendang to make her position known, and there were separate patterns for a widow free to remarry and for a widow who was a bride. After the Palembang sultanate fell, the cloth moved beyond the aristocracy.

Styles of Songket

Names change from island to island. Bali calls it songket or tenun cag cag; Manggarai in Flores and Bima in Sumbawa say songke; Karo Batak people in North Sumatra say jongkit; Ternate in Maluku says suje; Buginese people in South Sulawesi say subbi' and arekare'; Iban Dayak people in West Kalimantan and Sarawak say pilih or pileh. Weaving spreads from Palembang and the Minangkabau centres of Pandai Sikek, Silungkang, Koto Gadang and Padang to Bali, Lombok, Sambas, Sumbawa, Makassar, Sulawesi and elsewhere in Indonesia. The main modern divide is material: nylon metal thread against real gold, which turns a piece into an heirloom.

What Songket means

Malaysia listed songket as intangible national heritage in 2012, and in 2021 UNESCO added it to the Representative List, with Malaysia as the state party. Indonesia's Ministry of Education and Culture recognises five songket traditions: Palembang and Sambas in 2013, Pandai Sikek in West Sumatra in 2014, Beratan in Bali in 2018 and Silungkang in West Sumatra in 2019. Promotion has included an exhibition of West Sumatran songket in the Netherlands during Dutch colonial rule, and a songket carnival held in Sawahlunto, West Sumatra, in August 2015.

Questions people ask about Songket

Good reading and sources

• SongketUNESCO, Heritage listing

• Songket on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• More photos on Wikimedia CommonsPhotos and video
• Wikidata recordOpen data