Textile panel

Women on the remote Indonesian island of Sumba are renown for producing distinctive, boldly patterned warp ikat textiles, exemplified in the cloth here. The intricate process: preparing dyestuffs (indigo and kombu plant roots respectively yield the deep blues and reds); setting the pattern by resist-dyeing; and then weaving the cloth panels on a backstrap loom can take months to complete. The technique is believed to have arrived on the Indonesian archipelago during the Dong-Song period (8th- 2nd C BCE), and that knowledge has since been passed down matrilineally. Even today, men are denied access to the enclosure where the treads are dyed blue.