Islands of Gold Islands of Gold: The Thomas Murray Collection

BY ANNE RICHTER

THE COLLECTION of Indonesian and Philippine jewellery assembled by Thomas Murray is impressive for its range and depth. Most pieces are directly comparable to examples held in the Quai Branly–Jacques Chirac Museum in Paris, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Yale University Art Gallery in Connecticut, the digitised Netherlands National Wereld collection, and the respective National Museums of Indonesia in Jakarta and the Philippines in Manila.

There are three major Indonesian jewellery traditions, all of which are relevant today. The first is mostly found in the far east of the archipelago, in the islands of the southeast Moluccas, Flores, Timor and Sumba, and to a much lesser extent in Sumatra. Much of this jewellery is believed to derive from the regional admiration for rounded earrings with bud-like outer projections and internal cavities, as well as the strictly symmetrical bicephalic animal pendants made in southern coastal Vietnam and the Philippines from Taiwanese jade about 2500 years ago. These funda mental forms, in stone, wood, shell, bronze and precious metals, document the extraordinary story of Austronesian seaborne migration from Taiwan to the Philippines, Indonesia and on to the Pacific. Regional trade in bronze ornaments, drums and the axe, as a weapon of prestige, between Vietnam and Indonesia in the late BCE era and early centuries CE introduced spiral and geometric decoration, images of human figures, boats, the sun and waterbirds. Their forms and motifs were adapted by early Indonesian bronze casters to reflect more closely Indonesian aesthetic and cultural ideals.

The largest, most diverse and richest group of ornaments in this collection belongs to this first tradition. They are mostly from the eastern islands of the archipelago: the South Moluccas, Flores, Timor and Sumba. The jewellery of these islands is especially fascinating, not only for its beauty and distinctiveness, but also for its iconographic significance. While some pieces were worn as finery, many are best interpreted as sacred art. They embody cosmological principles in which the bright upper celestial and dynamic masculine realm is held in balance with the lower domain of femininity, fertility and prosperity.

Many pieces display a rounded or omega form with a central cavity: this has been interpreted as representing female genitalia, believed actively to generate new life and protect the living. Some pieces are considered the possessions of the ancestors, the original and often heroic founders of communities. As such, they were — and are still — employed in ritual communication to beseech the advice, protection and blessing of past generations inhabiting the afterworld. Important jewels are also used to engage with, and placate, the potentially vengeful spirits of trees and the earth when the proper boundaries between the human and natural worlds are crossed by the construction of a new house, for example. Some of these ornaments were accumulated over centuries by the nobility of hierarchically organised societies. They were magnificently arrayed in gold and intricately woven and dyed textiles and jewellery to assert their wealth, high standing and spiritual authority.

Jewels were also employed in marriage negotiations and gifted to the bride’s family by that of the groom to cement and articulate loyalties and obligations for future generations. They were also seen as carriers of clan histories and myths. Gleaming pectoral disks of various sizes were worn in all these eastern islands, serving as the insignia of the warrior. They were commissioned from metal smiths and were also collected as emblems of victory from the bodies of defeated adversaries.

This first tradition of Indonesian jewellery in this collection can also be seen in the ear ornaments of the Toba Batak people of North Sumatra, which share some forms, motifs and underlying belief systems with the eastern islands. The influence of Bronze Age spiral ornamentation is clear in the earrings from Jambi in Sumatra. The continuing relevance of this ancient tradition is also true of the earrings from northern Luzon in the Philippines.

Indonesia’s second major jewellery tradition, which is well represented in this collection, began with engagement in early international trade. By the 3rd century BCE, Indonesia was already known in India as Suvanadvipa, the “Golden Land”. The significance of its massive gold deposits became more widely understood subsequently. Its aromatic spices and other rare products were traded and well known, although their precise places of origin were not. Mainland commercial entrepôt states, such as Funan, were actively involved in trade between the Mediterranean, India, China and island Southeast Asia from the 2nd to the 5th century. While Indian political and religious ideas and extensive use of gold in jewellery had been adopted, Indian religious influence is not evident in excavated ornaments of this period. Similarly, Javanese jewellery of the Protoclassic Period (circa 200–650) is typified by simple and elegant ear ornaments, beads and intricately woven chains that testify to considerable expertise in goldsmithing. It is not until the Early Classic Period (circa 650–1000), which corresponds to the creation of magnificent temples and Hindu and Buddhist statuary in Java, and the Late Classic Period (circa 1000–1400), that Indian religious and mythological themes are celebrated in jewellery. Today, Hindu Bali is unique in continuing this tradition.

The third tradition derives from later international trade with the southern Mediterranean and Islamic world. The new religion of Islam spread voluntarily and gradually from northern Sumatra in the 13th century onwards to Java and elsewhere in the archipelago via contact with Arab and other Muslim traders from Fustat (Cairo), India and the Ottoman Empire. The Islamic heritage of forms and techniques, originating in the Greek, Roman and Byzantine empires, was passed on to Indonesian goldsmiths.

European observers of the 18th century were surprised and greatly admiring of the delicate and elaborate filigree and granulation work of Sumatra. Human, animal and Indian religious motifs were replaced by geometric patterns and more often by leaves, twining stems, flowers, buds and fruits, in applied filigree and repoussé, to reflect the beauty and vitality of Allah’s creation. Some examples of this third tradition are included in the collection.

This collection communicates the richness and importance of these three traditions. However, while items of jewellery can be appreciated as works of art in their own right, it is also necessary to see them in the context of the textiles with which they were worn to understand that they were only part of how the fully adorned human body has been understood and admired in Indonesia.

Note on Dating

Gold jewellery of the tribal societies of Indonesia may for the most part be assigned to the 19th/early 20th century with confidence; however, some pieces may be much earlier. Ancient Javanese gold falls into the following categories, as described by John Miksic in his book, Old Javanese Gold: Preclassic Period (roughly dating 500 BCE–CE 200), Protoclassic Period (roughly dating 200–650), Early Classic Period (roughly dating 650–1000), and Middle and Late Classic Periods (roughly dating 1000–1400, corresponding to the period of Eastern Javanese civilisation).

Words from Thomas Murray, the Collector

To begin, I would like to thank Anne Richter, the great Southeast Asian jewellery scholar, for her excellent article. It sums up the art historical and socio-cultural context of the gold objects in this collection eloquently and succinctly. I also thank Robin Markbreiter, Publisher and Editor of Arts of Asia, for presenting Anne Richter’s article and for inviting me to contribute some insights as to what motivated me as a collector over the forty-five plus years I have spent assembling this collection. I first arrived in Asia in 1978, rather later than many of my friends and colleagues, who travelled overland from Europe through Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, India and on to Nepal. Being contrarian, following my years at university, I flew across the Pacific, first to Hong Kong, then China (which had just opened two weeks beforehand after the fall of the Gang of Four) and then I made my way down to Bali. I promptly fell in love with the people, land and cultures of Indonesia, and their textiles. I was greatly attracted to the quality of spinning, dyeing and weaving, their colours and iconography. I became a man obsessed. I returned repeatedly, going further and deeper into more remote areas to observe ceremonies of still intact cultures, such as the Toraja, Batak and Sumba funeral ceremonies, or the Dayak Gawai harvest festivals in Borneo, where textiles were hung on longhouse walls to attract the gods of head hunting.

I did not start out with the idea of being an art dealer. I brought my camera with me, sometimes carried over my head when I crossed rivers, in the hope that I could become a documentary photographer for National Geographic or Geo magazine. That turned out to be easier said than done, and I had to sell some of my textiles to carry on the adventure.

My first international exhibition was in 1981 in Zurich, where I was living at the time. An elegant gentleman came into the gallery and introduced himself: his name was Jean Paul Barbier-Mueller (1930–2016), he liked the textiles and invited me to visit him at his museum in Geneva for the opening of the exceptionally important “Art of the Archaic Indonesians” exhibition. My eyes were opened and a lifelong friendship was formed.

Jean Paul encouraged me to expand my textile studies to include Indonesian tribal sculpture and jewellery, with the insight that within the culture, none of these art forms exists independently. With Jean Paul’s inspiration, I plunged into the study of wood sculpture, making pilgrimages to old colonial anthropology museums in the Netherlands, Germany, the UK, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy and Austria to learn about the “style and surface” of ancestor figures and shamanic charms; with his encouragement I sought out every opportunity to hold old gold in my hand and get a “feel” for its nature…

Please click here to view the contents of this issue.