Textiles in Burman Culture
Textiles in Burman Culture by Sylvia Fraser-Lu
Silkworm Books, 2020, 384 pages, 293 colour and 30 black-and-white illustrations
ISBN 978-616-215-163-7
Sylvia Fraser-Lu is a respected author in the world of Southeast Asian textiles. Her painstaking research and attention to detail ensure this book will be an important source for students and textile enthusiasts. A comprehensive text is accompanied by relevant colour and black-and-white plates. The author carries the reader through the history of textiles from early settlements to the workshops of today. Chapters on techniques and production highlight areas of the country where beautiful fabrics continue to be produced. The author establishes how textiles are embedded in local customs and rituals, proving that in traditional Burman society textiles are not mere commodities but symbols of the well-balanced rhythm of social and religious custom.
The author begins by tracing the development of textile production and trade. Photographs of sculptures and wall paintings explain how textiles were worn from earliest times. A combination of plain and patterned lengths of cloth were draped and wrapped around the body, for example turbans, sashes, and ankle-length skirts. Tailored blouses and jackets were a later addition, made by Chinese tailors who set up shop in major towns and by women in rural areas who invested in sewing machines. A reader who has dressmaking skills would find the line drawings of how tailored garments are constructed very useful for making their own versions. This fashion of combining wrapped garments with structured upper garments continues to the present day. The author tells us it is a style praised by local women as a symbol of Burmese beauty and elegance, epitomised in a photograph of state councillor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, who is associated internationally with this form of dress.
The chapter on textiles in everyday life contains a discussion on the level of independence available to Burman women in comparison with women in India and China, although, as the author points out, there were contradictions. Weaving, a female skill, was eclipsed by arts and crafts associated with male makers yet weaving always had and continues to
have significant importance in cultural life. Weaving features in romantic songs, poetry, and prose, and hand-woven textiles are an essential element in Burman rites of passage from birth to death. My own experience of studying textiles at a British institution is that most historical accounts available in our library were written by male European travellers to Southeast Asia who took with them Victorian and Edwardian attitudes to all women’s work. They simply did not notice or ignored it.
The author provides a comprehensive account of cotton, silk, and lotus fibre production and natural dyeing processes. She highlights areas of the country where traditional methods are practised, for example Mandalay, Meiktila, and Inle Lake. The following chapter on looms concentrates on small hand-weaving workshops where a range of looms are used. A wide variety of patterning techniques is explained, including the colourful wavy-lined luntaya acheik so often worn by royalty and the elite. As an important Burman pattern, it warrants a whole chapter devoted to its history and spread to other Southeast Asian countries. Similar attention is given to embroidery, particularly for court costumes. Photographs from the 19th century show cloud-shaped collars, epaulettes, and cloud-shaped aprons encrusted with semi-precious stones, sequins, and gold metallic thread, produced by artisans in court workshops. The visual effect was chronicled by a British visitor in the 19th century who witnessed a procession; a ‘moving mass of gold reflecting the rays of the sun’. The author shows how these lavish, embroidered patterns are interpreted in other Burman crafts, particularly woodcarving and lacquer.
A book on Burman textiles would not be complete without a chapter devoted to the importance of textiles in Buddhist ritual. It begins with an account of laws governing the making and wearing of monks’ robes and a set of illustrations showing how robes are folded and draped around the body. It continues with robe-giving rituals and a particular merit-making ritual when weavers compete to finish a set of robes within a limited time frame. The freshly woven robes are carried in procession to be draped over Buddha images. The author does not neglect female monks, reserving a section for their particular role in Buddhism and the style of robes they wear that are distinctive from male robes. Most monasteries have libraries where manuscripts are stored in cloth wrappings and bound with ribbons, the latter commissioned and offered to monasteries as acts of merit making. These interesting ribbons are woven with Buddhist texts and iconography. Some have details about the donors and weavers who made them. The chapter ends with a section on Buddhist banners flown to mark Buddhist festivals and painted mandala cloths used as canopies and wall hangings.
The author has included a survey of textiles from ‘the periphery’. Rakhine (formerly Arakan) has thriving textile workshops and weaving villages that produce a range of silk and cotton products for the Burman market. The Shan State comprises almost a quarter of what is now called Myanmar (hardly the periphery) and has an important history of textile production linked closely to Tai traditions in northern Thailand, Laos, and southwest China. It has thriving workshops that produce for the Burman market and for tourists—particularly textile enthusiasts who will pay international prices for hand-woven silk and lotus stem cloth. The survey concludes with a section on the Mon and weaving in Mudon, Dawei, Myeik, and Bago, where today few workshops survive.
The final chapter deals with continuity and change. Villagers, some with weaving skills, have chosen to move to cities and towns to work in textile factories established in new economic zones. Young factory workers with some discretionary income spend their money on copies of international fashion. The author highlights in particular the influence of Korean soaps on local fashion trends. Meanwhile the elite wear high-end Myanmar fashion, and overseas-trained designers have successfully shaken off an image of poor-quality local fabrics. As the author has shown, weaving workshops still produce silk and cotton textiles of good quality. The elephant in the room is that China is flooding the market with cheap synthetic textiles that are used even to make garments in the local style. On a positive note, a book that promotes the beauty of indigenous textiles, as this one does, should help local producers hold on to a share in the market.
Susan Conway is a Research Associate at the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex University.
This article first featured in our July/ August 2021 print issue, pp 90-91. To read more, purchase the full issue here.
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