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Two major types of ship cloths were once woven in South Sumatra. One, called tampan, is a relatively small rectangle or square as illus¬trated in plates 1 through 55. The other, termed palepai, is a long, narrow rectangle which may average three meters or more in length as in plates 56 through 80. Woven from cotton or cotton and silk, their intricate designs of ships, animals, trees, and people are created by colored supplementary weft threads whose rich reds, blues, or yellows p subtly contrast with the natural color of the foundation fibers. Metal¬lic strips and threads frequently lend glittering highlights or outline major shapes. Two lesser forms are the tampan madju (Chijs 1877, p. 20) and tatibin. The tampan madju, seen in plate 81, is painstakingly built up with strings of beads, and only three of these remarkable objects exist in collections today.l Almost as rare are the tatibin, cloths which resemble the long textiles in technique and design, but are small by comparison, averaging only 1 to 1.5 meters in length as in plate 82.2 |
