Pua Kumbu: The Ritual Textiles of the Iban of Sarawak

Tied, dyed and woven by hand on a back-strap loom, the pua kumbu of Sarawak’s Iban people is one of Southeast Asia’s great textile traditions. Here is what to look for, and where to see it.

Walk into any museum of Borneo and you will meet them: long cloths in rust red, deep brown and cream, covered in branching, interlocking patterns. These are pua kumbu (also written pua kumpu), the ceremonial textiles of the Iban, the largest indigenous group in Sarawak. They are not decorations. For generations they have marked births, harvests and the rituals that link the human and spirit worlds. They have also been made almost entirely by women.

What Is a Pua Kumbu?

A pua kumbu is a warp ikat cloth. Before any weaving begins, the long lengthwise threads (the warp) are stretched on a frame. The weaver then ties tight bundles of them with fibre so that those sections resist the dye. The threads are dyed, untied, re-tied and dyed again, and only then are they woven. The pattern exists in the threads before the cloth does. A writer for the Sarawak Museum, Empiang Jabu, notes that warp ikat is practised widely in the region, “but the finest is the pua woven by Iban women of Sarawak”.

The Tun Jugah Foundation in Kuching lists the stages: warping on the back-strap loom, folding and mounting the threads, tying the design, dyeing, covering parts to keep the first colour, dyeing again with indigo, untying, then weaving. Finally the upper and lower halves are cut and stitched together by hand to make one cloth.

The Colours of the Forest

Traditional pua kumbu are coloured with plant dyes. The Tun Jugah Foundation names the main sources. The roots of engkudu (Morinda citrifolia) give the prized deep red; engkerebai leaves and the bark of the sebangki tree give further reds; and tarum or renggat plants give indigo. Overlaying red and indigo produces the dark browns and near-blacks of many cloths.

Fixing the red dye depends on a mordant bath, prepared in a ritual known as ngar or nakar. In his study of Iban society, published by ANU Press, the anthropologist Clifford Sather explains that successfully completing it was called kayau indu, “women’s warfare”. The women who could lead it held the highest status a weaver could reach.

Reading the Patterns

Pua kumbu designs are not random. Sather notes that cloths are ranked by their designs, the status of their weaver and the ritual they are made for. A young weaver progresses stage by stage, and attempting a design beyond her level was believed to be dangerous. The most powerful patterns, often of spirits, crocodiles or human figures, were reserved for experienced women, who could also create new designs revealed to them in dreams.

For a visitor, the best approach is simply to look closely. Many cloths show a central field of repeated motifs framed by borders, and the white lines left by the resist ties give the patterns their slightly blurred, vibrating edges, the signature of real ikat.

A Living Tradition

According to the Sarawak Museum’s paper, pua kumbu became widely known outside Borneo after 1920 and were eagerly sought by museums and collectors. Today the craft is kept alive by weavers in Iban longhouses and by organisations such as the Tun Jugah Foundation, whose gallery is dedicated to Dato Margaret Linggi, a weaver who championed the preservation of Iban ikat. Alongside pua kumbu, Iban women also make sungkit, a slower technique in which patterns are wrapped into the weft with a needle.

Where to See Pua Kumbu in Kuching

• Tun Jugah Foundation Textile Gallery and Museum: on Level 4 of Tun Jugah Tower, Jalan Tunku Abdul Rahman. It holds more than 500 pua kumbu and other woven textiles, with looms showing each stage. Open Monday to Friday, 9am to 12 noon and 1pm to 4pm; closed weekends and public holidays.
• Borneo Cultures Museum: the Sarawak Museum Department’s five-storey museum beside Padang Merdeka. Open Monday to Friday 9am to 4.45pm and weekends 9.30am to 4.30pm (last entry 4pm). Service Sarawak lists foreign adult tickets at RM50 (about US$12.25).
• Sarawak Cultural Village at Santubong, north of the city, where weavers demonstrate in a reconstructed Iban longhouse.

If you buy a pua kumbu, ask who wove it and how it was dyed. Hand-tied, naturally dyed cloths take months to make and are priced accordingly; machine-printed “ikat” is common in souvenir shops. For more on Malaysia’s textile heritage, see our guide to Malaysian and Indonesian batik.

Have you seen a pua kumbu being woven? Tell us in the comments below.

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