Old Superb Ceremonial Balinese hand woven textile Antique Burgundy Red Embroidery Brocade damask Wedding Songket with Metallic Gold Threads 38" x 17" (SG29) Collected in Klunkung Regency, Bali & belonging to Nobility royalty

TEXTILES OF THE PAST

Museum Quality, Metallic Brocade Woman Wedding Songket With Stupa Motifs. Belonged to Balinese Nobility. Burgundy embroidery with metallic gold threads, handwoven from handspun silk and cotton. 

SIZE: 38" x 17"

ITEM: SG29

 PROVENANCE: KLUNKUNG, BALI  

OVER 60 YEARS OLD

 Minute time-consuming intricate and perfect embroidery motifs! Takes long months to achieve, sometimes years! Never 2 of those prized cloths are alike!

This is a unique authentic collector dowry textile that belonged to Balinese royalty, hard to find today especially older ones and in this good a condition. Handmade dowry textiles are passed from one generation to the next and used mostly for ceremonial purposes because of their worth. They attest to the wealth of the owner.

Songket is a fabric that belongs to the family of brocade textiles. It is hand woven in silk or cotton, and intricately patterned with gold or silver threads. The metallic threads stand out against the background cloth to create a shimmering effect. In the weaving process the metallic threads are inserted in between the silk or cotton weft (latitudinal) threads. The term songket comes from the Malay Indonesian word sungkit, which means "to hook". It has something to do with the method of songket making; to hook and pick a group of threads, and then slip the gold threads in it. The word menyongket means "to embroider with gold or silver threads".

Songket is a luxury product traditionally worn during ceremonial occasions as sarong, shoulder cloths or head ties. Tanjak or Songket headdresses were worn at the courts of the Malay Sultanates and nobility. Traditionally women and adolescent girls wove songket and traditionally-patterned textiles embodied a system of interpretable emblems to the few that were able to create them and wear them. 

Few costumes in the world have the dignified elegance of the ceremonial costume of a noblewoman: the underskirt dragging on the ground in a train of silk and gold; the torso, bound from the hips to the armpits; first is a strong bulang, a strip of cloth covered by a sabuk, another strip of silk overlaid, and gold leaf and gold plugs through her ears.

All our collector and rare items come with pages and pages of research about provenance, and with history of the tribes and photos as well, depending on item and whenever possible.  When shipping internationally, we group ship multiple purchases to save you money, and find the best rates available. If you have any questions or want to see research conducted on this piece and photos of tribes, tell us.