‘Geringsing’, Bali’s magic cloth

Enter the windowless red-brick home of I Wayan Gelgel in Tenganan, East Bali, and you walk into a mini museum. Paintings of tropical landscapes, stone busts and kris ceremonial daggers clamor for attention.

What attracts visitors most to this art house, however, are the pale cloths hanging on wooden racks along the wall. This is the geringsing, the traditional textile of Tenganan, a village tucked away in the coastal foothills southeast of the 3,142-meter-high Mount Agung, Bali’s famed active volcano. I Wayan’s house is a weaving studio with sunlight streaming through a square opening in the roof. The sunlight, supplemented by the brightness of an overhead bulb, shines on an elderly woman sitting cross-legged on a white tile floor as she works at a loom.

I Wayan, 45, learned her weaving skills from her mother, Nengah Kunti, the woman at the loom. Nengah Kunti, in turn, learned the craft from her mother.

A single piece of cloth, I Wayan said, can take up to three years to complete. The process is laborious and only plant-based dyes are used, which is why the geringsing is expensive and reserved for special ceremonies, never for daily wear, she said.

The geringsing is woven only in Tenganan. It uses the double ikat (double tie) technique – it is the only type of textile in Indonesia that applies this method. Warp threads run lengthwise or on the vertical in the loom. Weft threads cross the warp on the horizontal. An abstract or geometrical pattern is dyed into the warp and weft threads. An exacting task is ensuring that the pattern on the warp and weft threads meet at a precise point.

The dyes are in natural colors, I Wayan explained, listing the sources of the hues: Indigo blue is made from the taum leaf, maroon is taken from the bark of the sunti wood and yellow is extracted from the oil of the kemiri tree. The dyeing process alone can take months, she added.
Is the geringsing similar to the tie-dye tenun ikat cloth from Flores, Timor and the East Nusa Tenggara island group? “No, the fabrics from East Nusa Tenggara only have a single ikat and use chemicals for dyeing,” I Wayan replied.

What patterns are made?

Nengah Kunti, I Wayan’s 75-year-old mother, rattled off a list: Sanenpeg, cempaka, papare, teteledan, batuntuong, sitanpegat and the lubeng. The lubeng is a multi-studded box pattern that looks like an aerial view of the Borobudur Temple. Each of the four sides of the square then has a triangular spear point protruding outward. These, I Wayan explained, are the four scorpions that protect the walls of the temple.

The sanenpeg is a popular box-within-a-box motif. Earlier in the day, a Dutch woman bought two shawl-size pieces in a sanenpeg for Rp 7.5 million. The most expensive geringsing piece I Wayan has in stock is the papare pattern taken from the pare plant. It took her three years to weave and can damage a buyer’s purse by Rp 10 million. By comparison, a later visit to Ubud, arguably the prime cultural center of Bali, turned up a piece of rolled geringsing in a major art shop priced at Rp 80 million.

On when to wear a geringsing piece, I Wayan explained a baby would be wrapped in one in a ceremony when he or she is three months old.

In a further rite of passage, boys and girls wear it when they reach puberty and have their six upper front teeth filed.

This act is the sadripu, a local belief that the leveling of the six teeth is to ward off six bad behaviors: stealing, lying, stinginess, anger, boastfulness and adultery.

Marriage is another sacred occasion when the geringsing comes out.

In dance, only one dance uses the geringsing for its performers. This is the rejang dance,performed only in Tenganan village, to honor the Hindu god Bhatara Siwa, explained Gusti Sudiasa, a local guide.

What really sets the geringsing apart is the belief in its magic properties. As Gusti Sudiasa explained, a piece of geringsing is placed on one’s shoulders in rituals out of the belief that it can protect the wearer from misfortune.