Malay Silver & Gold

Malay Silver & Gold

COURTLY SPLENDOUR FROM INDONESIA, MALAYSIA, SINGAPORE, BRUNEI AND THAILAND

Michael Backman

First published in Thailand in 2023 by River Books Press Co., Ltd

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Copyright collective work © River Books, 2023

Copyright texts © Michael Backman, 2023

Copyright photographs © Michael Backman, 2023 except where indicated otherwise.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electrical or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage or retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher.

Publishers: Narisa Chakrabongse

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Editor: Narisa Chakrabongse

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ISBN 978 616 451 077 7

Front cover: xxxxx

Back cover: xxx

Frontispiece: xxx

Page 2: A gold talismanic necklace, probably for an infant prince, that comprises a central gold pendant (dokoh) shaped as a breadfruit leaf (daun sukun) set with rubies and decorated with filigree and granulation work, two fluted cylindrical amulet holders, and two ʻcoinʼ charms decorated with filigree and granulation. Malay Peninsula, 18th-19th century. Width of main pendant: 6cm. (Author’s collection)

Opposite page: xxxx

Printed and bound in Thailand by Sirivatana Interprint Public Co., Ltd

14. Silver and Gold for Feasting

15. At the Heart of being Malay: Luxury Betel Sets and Tobacco Boxes

16. Malay Waist Buckles: Allegories of Paradise

17. Portable Wealth: Gold and Silver Jewellery

18. Pillow Ends, Modesty Plates and Other Luxury Items in Gold and Silver

19. Weapons for Royalty

20. Inscriptions on Malay Silver and Gold

Appendix 1 – Defining Malay

Appendix 2 – Overview of Key Malay Sultanates

Endnotes

Bibliography

Index

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Silver particularly has always appealed to me. It is an aesthetic I picked up from my father Geoffrey. We had in our house when I was a boy unusual items of silver made in faraway places, and these were regarded almost with reverence. Plus when growing up, he often took me to museums and to exhibitions, and again, there was a reverence for the artisans and the artists which I now realise I osmotically absorbed. My son Shimon has grown up similarly immersed, and so he has knowledge and values that undoubtedly he takes for granted, but which it turns out, not everyone has.

In the preparation of this book, and more broadly, Eddie Chin has helped in so many ways, from assistance with technical aspects to being a sounding board for ideas and theories, but especially through his loyalty and trust, and by never demurring from my wish to press ahead.

Annabel Teh Gallop of the British Library very generously read through the entire manuscript and offered helpful modifications and insights. Annabel is known and appreciated worldwide by anyone with an interest in Malay studies, and rightly so. I am deeply appreciative of the time and care she took. Annabel also kindly provided translations of the Jawi inscriptions that occasionally appear on Sumatran and Malay Peninsular silverware.

Paul Bromberg has been a great friend and fellow silver enthusiast. Paul also kindly copy edited the text.

Tim Gibbs has been a valuable source of information on silversmithing techniques and tools – more than he will know! We have had many useful discussions that have influenced my thinking in the preparation of this book.

Many others have helped me shape this book. Sometimes just one carefully-judged comment has had a deep impact on my thinking. Among those with whom I have had useful exchanges are Naomi Wang, James Bennett, Peter Lee, Clement Onn, Noora Zulkifli, and Anne Richter. Olga Novoseltseva, Rosanna van den Bogaerde, Antonietta Itropico and Roger Tol have also helped in other ways.

Fon Nanta of River Books has done a splendid job with laying out the text and images. Finally, Narisa Chakrabongse, my publisher, has indulged me enormously on this project, something of which she reminded me when I was seeking even more indulgence! The book is longer than either of us planned, but then nothing quite like this on the topic has been published, and so she agreed that there seemed little option other than to keep going. Narisa has worked so hard publishing dozens of books on Southeast Asian art and culture – books that many other publishers probably would not have published - and as a consequence, she has made a deep contribution to the preservation of knowledge that concerns the history and material cultures of Southeast Asia, and she has done it with great flair and humour which makes her a real joy to work with. Thank you.

Michael Backman, London.

DISCOVERING MALAY SILVER AND GOLD Chapter 1

The Malays were the most powerful commercial group in Southeast Asia for centuries. Dozens of Malay sultanates existed across Sumatra, the Malay Peninsula, southern Thailand and Borneo, and there were communities of Malay traders further afield. Together, they formed a dynamic, commercial web. Their wealth supported many artisans, silver and goldsmiths among them. However, just as the past commercial prowess of the Malays largely is forgotten today, so too has been their silver and gold.

One book – Oriental Silverwork - Malay and Chinese: A Handbook for Connoisseurs, Collectors, Students and Silversmiths – published in 1910 by Henry Ling Roth, the celebrated British ethnologist, has been the only significant reference on Malay silver.1 Yet, Roth never visited the Malay Peninsula. His work was undertaken entirely in England, and was based on several collections of Malay silver brought back to England around that time. These collections served only as a snapshot of what was available at around the end of the 19th century, and then only from the Malay Peninsula, and mostly from Perak. Moreover, the distribution of the Malays was much wider than the Peninsula, and the tradition of Malay gold and silver extended back hundreds of years. Until now, Oriental Silverwork (which was reprinted in 1966 and again in 1993) has been the standard reference work for more than century, during which time Roth’s observations have been repeated uncritically, and as fact.

There was one other tome that, had anyone realised it, could have proved a useful reference on Malay silver. Richard Wilkinson, a colonial administrator who served on the Malay Peninsula at the end of the 19th century, produced A Malay-English Dictionary, published in 1901. It is an extraordinary work, and more remarkable still for the fact that Wilkinson was a collector of Malay silver. As a consequence, he was unduly sensitive to the Malay terms for different items of silver, and also the terms used by Malay silversmiths, which would otherwise have died out with the silversmiths. Most of these terms would be lost to us today had it not been for Wilkinson’s diligence in recording them in his dictionary. Few people would have cared about these words or even known to seek them out, but Wilkinson did because he was a collector. Part of my preparation for this book involved reading through Wilkinson’s 1,300-word dictionary to find each these precious, and often long-forgotten, terms; and many now appear in this volume.

Another problem with books and other surveys on this topic is that they tend to focus on geopolitical space as recently defined. Thus books, or chapters within books, look at the silverwork or the jewellery of ‘Indonesia’ or ‘Malaysia’. Yet, the Malay world cuts across modern borders and so the Malays of Sumatra, for example, are almost always forgotten or their art is subsumed into the cultures of others when it comes to books that focus on ‘Indonesia’, and books that focus on Malaysia tell only half the Malay story.

Malay objects in silver and gold are rare. No public institution, either in Asia or Europe, holds a particularly large or diverse collection. This book represents the largest collection of images of Malay silver and gold yet brought together; most of the items illustrated have not been published before. Books on Indonesian or Malay gold and silver tend to focus almost

1.1, 1.2 This tobacco or betel box (celapa) from the Malay Peninsula depicts the same box illustrated in Figure 10 (shown) of Henry Ling Roth’s Oriental Silver. It is of silver with borders overlaid with suasa and a central plaque of gold filigree, and was collected by Cecil Wray, the former British Resident of Pahang (1905-1908). Diameter: 7.5 cm. (Author’s collection)

exclusively on jewellery, as do most private collections. Gold and silver objects, and thus the bulk of the art of the Malay silversmith, have been largely ignored. This is a pity because Malay silver when it is good, is great.

English silver, along with other European silver, is much celebrated. Items such as large wine cisterns, table centrepieces and candelabra, made by the likes of renowned English silversmiths, Paul de Lamerie and Paul Storr, in the 18th century, are regarded as the pinnacle of the silversmith’s craft. But is it?

Top English silversmithing firms operated workshops in which tasks were highly segmented – each smith was responsible for only a component of each overall item. The firms operated production lines, with no particular silversmith responsible for, or even capable of, undertaking all the tasks. Short cuts were taken. Many of the most extravagant pieces of English silver were cast, rather than wrought by hand. Thus, the real artisan was the model maker, usually working in wax or clay. Elsewhere, much detailing was not chased by hand but stamped from an existing metal die. Also, larger pieces tended to be fabricated from components that were bolted together, rarely soldered because the heat from the soldering would ruin the finishing. British, European and American silversmiths were skilled in processes and in design: they were much less skilled as silversmiths.

Now consider the Malay silversmith. Casting was barely in the Malay silversmith’s repertoire. Items tended to be beaten from a silver ingot and shaped accordingly. Everything was made and finished by hand, so each piece tends to be unique, even when part of a set. Nor did the Malay silversmith work to patterns or models. The individual silversmith undertook each process, and did every task from beginning to end. This was silversmithing in its purest form. Where the Malay silversmith made the entire item, the English silversmith might have cast only its legs, with the remainder having been done by his colleagues.

There is a distinct Malay aesthetic too. The decoration on traditional Malay silver and gold tends to be far more restrained than that found on say Burmese or Thai articles. Traditionally, not only has Malay art avoided the representation of living creatures, but also that of created things such as architectural constructs. Motifs almost invariably are based on a

mixture of abstraction and naturalism, generally in the form of plant motifs. The decoration usually is chased rather than repousséd and rarely in high relief. It has much in common with Malay woodcarving, with its meandering, Islamic-inspired vegetal scrolls. Interestingly, similarities with motifs on Malay textiles are less striking. With the chasing, repoussé and engraving being done by hand, and in accordance with the Islamic-Malay aesthetic, Malay silver is among the most beautiful silver ever produced.

The relative scarcity of Malay silver has not helped it be understood or recognised. It is particularly rare because of sumptuary practices that restricted its ownership to the royal families and forbade ordinary Malays from using and owning such items, albeit these practices were followed less over time. Also, the Malays were not numerically large in population; ordinary Malays were materially quite poor and, indeed, most culturally did not value the accumulation of wealth. What little gold and silver Malay people might accumulate often was sacrificed to raise funds to go on the Haj, or to fund a wedding.

Dislocation from war and colonisation is another factor. Thai silverware, for example, has tended to survive in Thailand much more than Malay silverware has survived in Malaysia. Thailand did not undergo the disruption of colonial rule. Nor was its elite quite so stripped of its wealth as was the case in Malaya during Japanese occupation in the Second World War. The decentralised nature of the Malay world is another factor. It has no obvious centre or focal point, a natural place for Malay gold and silver to accumulate. Today, the best place to see traditional Thai silver is Thailand, but it is not correspondingly the case that the best place to see Malay silver is Malaysia or even Indonesia.

The Malays: Key to the Indies

Arguably, the ‘cradle’ of Malay culture is in Sumatra in what is today Indonesia. Today, the Malays live along coastal Sumatra, throughout the Malay Peninsula, southern Thailand, Singapore and coastal Borneo. They are Muslims, and their traditional language is Malay or a local variant. For most of their history, they have been split across many small kingdoms, but

1.3, 1.4 The torch ginger flower (sometimes and erroneously referred to as a ‘pineapple’ motif) carved in wood on an architectural element. Motifs on wood carving have the closest relationship to those used on Malay silver. Probably Malay Peninsula or Sumatra, 19th century. A similar motif on a silver waist buckle is shown on the right. Malay Peninsula, 19th century. (Author’s collection)

loosely federated by shared traditions. They were traders and, until the advent of colonialism, controlled much of Southeast Asia commercially.

At the turn of the 16th century, Malacca, a Malay sultanate on the Malay Peninsula, was the richest polity in Southeast Asia. In the first decade of the 16th century, there would be as many as 100 ocean-going ships in port during its peak sailing season. Around thirty belonged to the sultan and local merchants, but the rest belonged to traders from India, China, Pegu (Burma), Java and elsewhere.2 It was for this reason that Tomé Pires, the Portuguese traveller, remarked in an account he completed around 1515 that “whoever is lord of Malacca has his hands on the throat of Venice.”3 By the 18th century, dozens of Malay kingdoms across the region controlled trade across Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula, and Malay traders were present in almost every port city.

The Malay world’s location, astride international shipping routes between the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean, ensured that it played a central role in international trade. Traders from both directions were able to meet in the various trading ports of the region, exchange goods and return home. The Malay world is in the middle of an area of ubiquitous sea lanes where the winds are moderate and predictable, and the water temperature is uniform, allowing wooden-hulled ships to survive for longer. The seas of the area were even more benevolent to trade and shipping than those of the stormier and deeper Mediterranean. The abundance of wood all around the water’s edge meant that materials for shipbuilding were plentiful and cheap.4

Nakhon Si Thammarat

Ayutthaya

Bangkok

Tenasserim Patani

Banda Aceh

Barus

Deli

Asahan Malacca

Johor Siak

Padang

Singapore

Riau Sambas

Indragini

Jambi

Palembang

Bencoolen

Banjarmasin

Makassar

Brunei

Sulu

Mindanao

Batavia Banten Demak

1.8 Important Malay sultanates and related centres.

For 18th century European traders in Southeast Asia, such as Thomas Forrest and William Marsden who published accounts of their experiences in Southeast Asia, the Malays were the group against which other groups – the Bugis, the Bataks, or the Acehnese, for example – should be compared. The Malays were the ‘go-to’ group, the region’s facilitators and brokers.

“A person who can speak Malay can be understood from Persia to the Philippines”, stated François Valentijn, the Dutch minister, naturalist and author, in the early 18th century.5 European traders, who wanted to access the markets of Southeast Asia, soon learned that there was one language they needed to speak no matter where they wanted to trade. It was not Siamese (Thai), Javanese or Chinese. It was Malay. Many became proficient not only in speaking Malay, but also in writing Jawi, an extended version of Arabic script that was amended to write the Malay language. Most non-Malay local rulers, whether Balinese or Javanese, had Malay-language tutors. The first Malay-Dutch dictionary was published in Amsterdam in 1603 by Frederick de Houtman, who sailed to Sumatra in the late 16th century.6

Several Malay-English dictionaries were prepared too. William Marsden, the English trader, published a famous example in 1812.

It is a testament to the commercial power of the Malays – this relatively small ethnic group from Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula – that Indonesia, a country of many regional languages and no common language, adopted as its national language at independence in 1945, a form of Malay, despite it being the native language of only around five per cent of all Indonesians. Similarly, the people of Indonesian descent (they were often Javanese) who migrated, or were exiled by the Dutch, to Sri Lanka and South Africa (where they are still known as the Cape Malays) were said to be Malay simply because that was a widely understood description at the time.

Malay commercial power was eroded by the rise of massive European trading companies in the region, and then by European colonisation itself. For centuries, coastal Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula were inextricably linked. The Malays on both sides of the Malacca Straits had operated as if the Straits were an inland sea, which linked them and served as the means to trade with each other, visit and intermarry. However, the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824 essentially split the Malay world in two. Thereafter, Sumatra was treated as the realm of the Dutch, and the Malay Peninsula became the realm of the British. Suddenly the sea, which had been the means for exchange and trade, was now a barrier. The Sultanate of Johor, which had spread across the Malay Peninsula and Sumatra, was now effectively partitioned. It was a shocking development for the Malay world.

Decline of the Malay World and Silversmithing

The Malay silversmith tended to work for a royal court and was paid in kind. Later, others worked at the village level, but the traditional village silversmith often did his silversmithing on a part-time basis. Only the courts could keep silver and goldsmiths occupied on a fulltime basis. In any event, most utensils of ordinary Malay folk tended to be made of brass or terracotta. Until the late 19th century, silver and gold utensils generally were reserved for the courts, often due to sumptuary practices.

Generally, Malay silverware was not made for sale. One did not go to a shop to buy it. One

1.5 The engraving on this Malay silver plate is among the finest and most complex seen. Malay Peninsula. 19th century and possibly earlier. Diameter: 24 cm (Author’s collection)

commissioned it from a silversmith, or the silversmith worked in conjunction with a palace and the royal family served as the patron. However, the decline of the Malay courts in the face of growing European power led to the inevitable decline of the Malay silversmith. The traditional relationship between smith and patron was disturbed in the 19th century, first with the incursion into Malay trading routes by Europeans powers, and then by colonial rule itself. Traditional Malay courts on the Malay Peninsula and in Sumatra no longer had the same level of wealth, and the sultans no longer ruled; instead, they merely reigned. Consequently,

they were no longer in business, the fortunate ones living on salaries or stipends granted to them by their new European colonial overlords. Many did not even have that.

Rather than transforming the nature of how they did business – as the court silversmiths of Burma did so dramatically with the abolition of the Mandalay-based Burmese monarchy by reorienting themselves to the new colonial market – Malay silversmithing, particularly on the Malay Peninsula, simply disappeared. The main patrons – the sultans and rajahs – no longer could afford to sponsor large retinues of craftsmen. Many left and tried to operate on their own, but were unable to prosper in the face of new competition from local Chinese silversmiths, who made silver in a Malay style (though, as we shall see, mostly for the colonial trinket market), as well as making it for local Chinese and localised Chinese (peranakan) clients. Said one colonial observer in 1908: “In their admiration for foreign art many Malays melted down their precious native silver and had it remade by Chinese craftsmen.”7 Competition too came from silver items imported from Europe and China, and from items fashioned from new types of media, such as aluminium, enamelled copper and other cheaper substitutes. Even local Chinese silversmithing was severely curtailed by the Great Depression in the 1930s, and then largely killed off by Japanese Occupation during the Second World War.

Changing social habits also saw a loss in traditional demand for Malay silver. The fashion for chewing betel was replaced by that of smoking rolled cigarettes, which saw a decline in demand for silver betel boxes, and then silver tobacco boxes became obsolete with the emergence of pre-packed cigarettes. The colonisation of the Malay Peninsula by the British meant that Malaya was flooded with machine-made goods. Their relative cheap price tended to extinguish the demand for locally produced arts and crafts.

Another blow to the Malay silversmith came from the Malays themselves. Growing Wahhabist tendencies, imported from what is known today as the Saudi Peninsula, and other reformist measures of local Islamic traditions saw a movement against the traditional customs and values of the Malay royal courts, with their profligacy being increasingly seen as un-Islamic. The accumulation of gold and silver was specifically opposed.8

A brief revival in the fortunes of traditional Peninsular Malay silversmiths came in the first decade of the 20th century when British administrators stimulated demand through handicrafts exhibitions. However, it was not enough. By circa 1925, the tradition of Malay silversmithing had largely disappeared from the Malay Peninsula.9 Silversmithing, particularly in Kelantan, was revived from the 1930s, but by then the forms no longer were traditional and instead were aimed at the souvenir and gift market, and most of the traditional motifs were lost.

Some Malay sultans, dispossessed of their lands and opportunities to earn an income, sold off their silver to try to make ends meet. W.G. Broek, a Dutch resident of Singapore in the 1920s, wrote about visiting the last Sultan of Riau, now in exile in Singapore, and in much reduced circumstances, to buy his silver. It is this sultan’s silver, sold off during the years just prior to his death and finally acquired from his estate, that forms an important part of several public museums’ holdings of Malay silver today. Broek’s account, translated from the original Dutch, is evocative if melancholic:10

1.6 Abdul Rahman II, the last Sultan of Riau-Lingga, who died in exile in Singapore in 1930. His personal collection was the source of several important examples of Malay silverware in museums today, including the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. (Photographer unknown)

And this fallen prince, impoverished and cast out, was compelled to give up his beautiful property, to trade it for money. Ruthless buyers did not consider how great the suffering must be of the owner who had grown up with that beauty, as heirlooms of his forefathers. The sale was not public. I had an invitation and I still remember the day as if it were yesterday, when I entered the Istana [the palace, presumably in Singapore’s Kampong Gelam] at nightfall to see the collection. I went there as people usually go to a sale, i.e. eager and full of joyful hope, but when I noticed there that great long table, full of mysterious twinkles in the inner gallery of that old dilapidated building, those bare white walls of the Istana, in the uncertain light of nightfall and that high, silent figure of that former ruler, [Sultan] Abdul Rahman Muadzam Shah, at the rear end of the room, then I felt the tragedy in all its magnitude. Small bowls, kettles, crockery, plates, whatever - everything made of the purest silver, heavy and solid, radiant and tingling, as if in a dream filled that stable-like room with a gleam and opulence, worthy of a royal residence. The way in which the sale took place was not without humour. There was a solemn calm, and no selling or bidding disturbed the silence. Once one made a choice from the many objects displayed on the table, one then turned to a native servant, who kindly spoke to us and gave us the same response to each of our questions: ‘I will ask His Highness.’ His Highness stood, a flower in his buttonhole and surrounded by female servants. There, kneeling down, the servant made his sembah [gesture of obeisance] muttered something, to which an equally whispered answer was received, made his sembah again, and then shuffled over to us to inform us that the object in question must yield at certain number of dollars. And I bought - I had to buy despite the tragedy of the case. If I didn’t buy now, then others would and the items would be irrevocably lost to me.

1.7 A superb betel box in silver and gold from the last Sultan of Riau-Lingga.

Length: 32 cm. Riau-Lingga. 19th century. (Collection of the Asian Civilisations Museum)

Hidden Malay Silver and Gold

Where is the best place to find Malay silver today? Much of it is in the UK and the Netherlands, often languishing in private collections, misattributed. Fortunately, souvenir hunting began as soon as Europeans arrived in Southeast Asia, so rare examples of Malay silver and gold, dating to the 18th century and earlier, can be found in Europe when they have largely vanished from the Malay world itself. Over time, the origins of this silver tended to be forgotten, and today it is usually assumed to hail from India, China, Persia or the Middle East. This means that the story of Malay gold and silver is one that must be pieced back together, like the pieces of a puzzle. In many instances, in writing and researching this book, I have had to look at items of silver and gold long removed from their origins and with provenance no longer recorded, and have had to make a judgment whether, on balance, these items are Malay or something else. A case in point is a group of items in gold filigree, which almost certainly was made by Malay goldsmiths in Sumatra circa the mid-18th century, expressly for the European market. This category of Malay work is revealed for the first time in this volume, and is the subject of Chapter 12.

The story of Malay gold and silver is further complicated by the collecting process itself. Collecting is a useful way to preserve the past, but it leads to distortions too. Museum collections in Europe and in Southeast Asia represent what was available during the great inclination to collect ‘ethnographic’ items towards the end of the 19th and in the early 20th century. Thus, museum collections do not present a survey of Malay silver but, instead, provide a survey of what was available when the decision was made to collect. This, of course, is one of the problems of Roth’s book. It provides an account of what could be accessed at the time from handicraft and curio markets in the Malay Peninsula, rather than being an account of the totality of Malay silver itself.

Private collections built up recently in Southeast Asia are even more distorting. The heyday of the Malay gold and silversmith is long over and so these newer collections feature the more commercially accessible output of other groups, such as the Minangkabau of the southern Sumatran Highlands. Such items, as we shall see, seem to have grown more extravagant and impractical the more they caught the attention of wealthy collectors. The Disney-esque creations of the Minangkabau have distorted even written history itself. Many collectors and curators today take these late concoctions as evidence of the commercial prominence of the Minangkabau compared with the Malays, when in fact the reverse is true.

Extraordinary as many items of Malay silver are, not always are the Malays given the credit for them. Too often, items of Malay silver are assumed to be the work of local Chinese or silversmiths belonging to some other group – any group it seems other than the Malays! Why have art historians given so little credit to the Malay silversmith, either ignoring Malay silver or attributing it as the work of some other ethnic group? Perhaps some blame can be placed on the welfarist economic preferment policies encapsulated in the Malaysian government’s New Economic Policy (NEP) and successor programmes, which aim to curtail the position of the country’s ethnic Chinese population in favour of the Malay majority. Whilst these policies have been important for social cohesion, inevitably they have tainted how the Malays today are viewed outside Asia, and no doubt has distorted