Geringsing Double Ikat

Geringsing is a sacred cloth and an important power object. Made in Bali and used during ceremonial occassions.It is worn as shoulder, breast or waist cloth. It is easily recongnized by the hand spun cotton, loose weave and muted color scheme of brown, orange, black and off white.

Geringsings are decorated in a double ikat technique which is very labor intensive and expensive. It is practised in three places- Japan, India and the village of Tenganang in Bali, where this geringsing is from. In the ikat technique the yarns get tie-dyed before they are woven, a process that can be repeated with different colors. The simplest ikats are the ones that are warp tie-dyed. The weft ikats are more complicated as the suttled back and forth weft yarns need to be pulled individually into the registered design. In double ikat they need to be alligned vertically as well, making a clear image hard to achieve.

In Indonesian textiles realism is very rare and not the perceived objective. In this example, one of about 20 different styles of them, consists of semi-circular areas, defined by the rays of the large star-shaped motif with a stepped rectangle in the center .The semi circular areas contain groups of human figures seated on pedestals.The figures are reminiscent of the shape of Wayang shadow puppets, though the busy drawing makes it all hard to decipher.