L-M BRIC News No. 12, Notes                           2009-07-10 © 2009

L-M Braiding Research & Information Center / Masako Kinoshita, Editor
5 Winthrop Place, Ithaca, NY 14850 U. S. A.
Phone & Fax:: 607-257-0886 e-mail mkinoshi@twcny.rr.com

 

L-M BRIC News No. 12

 

Notes 

Ed(itor's) note 1.  Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford University, Oxford, UK: Accession no. 2008.67.1 1956.  Gift of Miss Parry Okeden.

Ed. note 2.  The braid Society Newsletter no. 60, March 2008.

Ed. note 3.  N. Speiser, Old English Pattern Books for Loop Braiding (OEPB), Arboldswil: Self published, 2000.

Ed. note 4.  L-M BRIC News No. 8.

Ed. note 5. For details of the publication schedule, see the 2009 Acivities Column in the back of this issue.

Ed. Note 6. The apostrophes denoting the characteristic accents of the Torajan language are abbreviated because they conflict with the web markings.

Note 1. Tana Toraja Regency where people of Sadan Toraja resides was divided and became two independent regencies, Tana Toraja Regency and Toraja Utara Regency. Here I will call them Toraja Regencies or simply Toraja when dealing with both places.

Ed. note 7. Toraja have never been politically united. Three traditional territories, the South, West and North, have been set up according to their chiefs, whose names are puang, madika and siambe respectively. The territory names are still commonly in use. The prefixed South, West, and North to the county names in this article indicate which territory the counties are in. The numbers that follow county names indicate their positions on the map.

Ed. Note 8.  The shorter and more commonly used names of the three braids used throughout this article correspond respectively in the structural terms to 4-ridge twill tubular braid, 4-ridge twill flat braid and 2-ridge twin twill flat braids. Because these three braids share the most basic pattern characteristics and are found in the majority of places where the l-m braiding is or was used, they are called the three basic braids.

Note 2. In the loop-manipulation braiding technique (l-m braiding), while the odd number of loops such as 5 or 7 is more often used for constructing braids, an even number of loops such as 4 or 8 may also be used.
We recorded braiding with 4 loops in Village B, and 8 loops in Village T, both in Mamasa. The stitch pattern of square braids made using 4 loops, for instance, has 2/1/2/3 twill pattern, with 8 loops 4/3/4/5, whereas those made using 5 loops have 2/2/3/3, with 7 loops 3/3/4/4. Therefore the shape of their cross section may differ while they all share an identical basic structure of the square braid. In particular, the cross section of square braids made using 4 loops can easily be mistaken as a triangle.

Note 3.  Noémi Speiser defines a DOUBLE SQUARE BRAID (DSB) in her book, OLD ENGLISH PATTERN BOOKS FOR LOOP BRAIDING as a double interconnected square braid (p. 25), or Two interconnected square braids (p. 47). (Refer also to Ed. note 3)

Note 4. Private correspondences of Jan. 8, 2007 and May 5, 2009.

Note 5. The three south regions, Sangalla (23), Makale (22), and Menkendekku (24), formed a union ruled under puang chiefs that was called Tallu Lembangna /the three ships.

Note 6. Of the two pouches, one is of cotton (likely to have been used in Buntao (3)) reported in L-M BRIC News No. 9.  The other is of pineapple fiber, seen on the 2008 trip (used in Sangalla (23)). The attempt of constructing 8-ridge twill flat braid (by 2-person braiding) in Buntao by a woman assisted by me has also been reported in the same Newsletter issue.

Note 7. Balusu District (7) situated north and east of Sadan District, the subject of Series 2 report. We confirmed that a priest's formal outfit with trimmings of various kinds of l-m braids that might have been made using 2- and 3-person interconnection techniques was used in Balusu in 2008. (L-M BRIC News No. 9, Photo 2)  Its 12-ridge twill flat braid and lace parts are highly likely to be 3-person l-m braiding. Therefore its DSB portion is quite likely to have been made using 10 loops.
Proliferation of loop braiding earlier in Balusu District may be evidenced by a custom still practiced today in some part of the district in which women make three braids for tying the corpse as they sing a song, malonde, during the funeral.

Ed. note 9.  L-M BRIC News  No. 8, Part 1 of this Series.

Note 8.  In Saluputti district, beke means a tie string around the hip, and talika headband.

Note 9.  Emery, Irene, The Primary Structure of Fabrics, p. 30, 1980;  Kajitani, Nobuko, 'Andesu no Orimono = Textile of the Andes,' Senshoku no Bi: 20, p. 94, 1982; Horiuchi, Noriko, Ippon no Sen Kara = from a line, p-59, 1986; Suzuki, Miyako, Senshoku Kozo Zuten = Illustrated Dictionary of Structures of Textiles, p. 398, 2005.

Note 10.  Irene Emery, The Primary Structure of Fabrics, p. 53,1980; Horiuch, Noriko, from a line, p. 432, 1986.

Note 11. The main reason that the element number of the head and the middle portions of this DSG cannot be specified is that the end of the braid is covered under the knob. In addition, it also was difficult to look beneath the firmly constructed surface work without damaging it.

Note 12.  An eight-ridge twill tubular braid is formed by making the "Open" loop transfers at the interconnection and at the ridges nearest between the two workers.

Ed. note 10.  "The wider (or narrower) face" of a DSB here means the wider (or narrower) of the two wider faces of a DSB. An l-m-made DSB made interconnecting two square braids has a trapezoidal cross section with the top and bottom sides twice as wide as its sides. One of the wider faces of DSB, therefore, is wider than the other.

Ed. note 10.  L-M BRIC News No. 8.

Note 13. At indigenous religious funerals, the mud-dye ceremony takes place three days after the coffin is buried. I recorded that the ceremony is called ma bolong in southern and northern Toraja, whereas it is called in West Saluputti District (14) manglulluk, while both name are used in Rembon (20). In Mamasa Regency which is situated west of both Toraja Regencies, it is called ballulukan.  The words "manglulluk" and "ballulukan" share the same word root of "lluk/dyeing in black," showing that West Toraja received cultural influence from Mamasa. (Buijis, Kees, Power of Blessing from the Wilderness and from Heaven, Leiden, KITLV Press, p. 75-76, 2006; Kusakabe, Keiko, Textiles of the Sulawesi Islands, Compiled by E. Iwanaga, Fukuoka: Fukuoka Municipal Museum, pp 79, 109-110, 2006; Nooy-Palm, Hetty, The Sadan Toraja, 2. Rituals of the East and West, Leidem, KITLV, 241-2, 274, 187-8, 1986.)

Note 14.  Indo ~ means "Mother of so and so." In Toraja, both parents are addressed by "parent of the name of the oldest child," while Ambe ~ (child's name) means the father of ~. Papa ~ or Mama ~ is favored among young parents. On the other hand, nene ~ addresses both grandparents. Indo ~ in general implies respect and it's use is favored.

Note 15. "A retteng is an improvised verse which is recited by the person who composes it." "A retteng that is recited when the chant for the deceased is being sung is introduced at an arbitrarily chosen place in the chant."
Veen, H., van der,   'The Sadan Toradja Chant for the Deceased,' Verhandlingen van het Koninklijk voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde: Deel 49 = Research Papers of Royal (Netherlands) Institute of Southeast Asia and Caribbean Studies; Series 49, p. 16-17, 1966.

Note 16. The B/W photo shows three braiders working together exchanging loops to make a braid in Dalarna, Sweden, in ca 1920. (OEPB p. 33, Nordiska Museet)  The sole photo demonstrating the multi-person l-m braiding technique has been deemed, however, as having been made with three braiders acting under an instruction and not by indegenous l-m braiders. J. Boutrup's probing research revealed that they were actually making a braid with an unorthodox pattern under an instructor. (L-M BRIC NEWS NO. 6)  The interconnection method used here has been assumed to be the simultaneous exchange.

Note 17.  N. Speiser, The Manual of Braiding, Basel; Private pub., p. 153, 1983; p. 73, 1988, 1911. In the interconnection method illustrated, braider A, instead of making the prescribed loop passage on his own inner hand, makes it on the braider B's inner hand thus B's loop gets to form a prescribed stitch and at the same time transferred to A's inner hand. The mirror image movement is then performed to complete an interconnection. Because the prescribed passage shown is for a square braid, the braid inevitably results in a double-square braid. The same illustration is also shown in OEPB, p. 24.
Interconnection methods work for either of the finger-held methods, small finger operated or index-finger operated.

Note 18. M. Kinoshita, 'Two–person Loop Braiding Procedures Converted for Working Alone,' Strand Issue 12, p. 20, 2005.
Note 19. In 2-person braiding, by using 9 loops a regular pattern can be produced by eliminating 1 float of irregularity from a twill flat braid. For the DSB, however, by using 9 loops results in less regular structure than using 10 loops.