Sumba is a small Indonesian island covering 11,150 square km which is populated by over 500,000 people. It is well known for its sandalwood, horses, impressive megalithic tombs and hand woven textiles, known as tenun.

Sumba has a unique culture and social life. Sumbanese were traditionally divided into three levels of society - Raja, or King (Maramba), Customary Official (Kabihu), and Slaves (Ata). Modern day Sumbanese make their living from farming, animal breeding, rice field farming, trading, and weaving.  Owning livestock contributes to their social status - animals are either given or slaughtered for ceremonies - the larger the amount, the higher the family's social status. Because of the importance of animals in the lives of the Sumbanese, animal symbols are abundant in the tenun cloth.

Symbols used in the traditional weavings are related to their native and original religion called Marapu. In past times, history was not recorded on paper - it was recorded thru symbols in their weavings, and weavings were passed down thru the generations to keep their history alive.

Traditional tenun cloth is made with cotton handspun threads and dyed with natural materials from the forest, and these give tenun it's characteristically earthy brown, red, yellow and orange tones, as well as the blue of indigo.

Pretty much all of the weaving work is the domain of the women of the village - although the men usually collect the natural dye materials from the forest. The most complex dying processes are those concerned with the bright rust colours, known on Sumba as kombu, which is produced from the roots of the kombu tree. Blue dyes come from the indigo plant - the kenawang tree, and purple or brown can be produced by dying the cloth deep blue and then over dying it with kombu.

Each time the threads are dipped in dye, the sections that are not due to receive colour are bound together (ikatted) beforehand with dye-resistant strings made from a specific, shredded, tree leaf. A separate tying and dying process is carried out for each colour that will appear in the finished cloth - and the sequence of dying has to consider the effect of over dying.  The tying and dying stage is what makes tenun and it requires great skill, since the dyer has to work out - before the threads are woven into cloth - exactly which parts of the thread are to receive each colour in order to give the usually complicated pattern of the final cloth. After dying, the cloth is woven on a simple hand loom, or backstrap loom.

Body tension looms are well suited to domestic modes of production in rural areas. These looms are made of relatively inexpensive materials, take up little space, and can be rolled up and stored when not in use. A weavers output with a body-tension loom is not high, and may have altered little in more than a century - a two meter length of tenun takes approximately two months to complete. A family heirloom tenun, containing four or five colours, can take up to two years to complete ! No two tenuns are ever the same.

Put a lovely tenun in your home today, be proud to support  a village industry, and keep a unique tradition alive.