WOVEN WISDOM Converging Forms and Reinvented Meanings in Minangkabau and Mindanao Textiles

Convergences of forms and realignments of meanings are examined with special reference to the kain songket, or gold supplementary weft textiles, of the Minangkabau people in West Sumatra, Indonesia vis a vis related motifs among the Maranao, Maguindanao, and Tausug people of Mindanao and Sulu, Philippines. These comparisons interrogate larger questions of multi-directional circulations of forms, meanings, terminologies, and their mutations and realignments across time and geography. I first discuss the close relationship between textile patterns and architectural carvings in West Sumatra, then call attention to formal convergences with Mindanao textile patterns. Such forms do not simply travel but are reinterpreted within local social, political, and material contexts.