These baskets and containers illustrate the wide-ranging skills and materials used to satisfy many specific needs of traditional life in the Lesser Sunda Islands of Indonesia. Utilising wood, differing palm products, bamboo, and imported glass beads, a variety of containers are made which as well as being beautiful and functional, offer many cultural insights.

These two examples from Lombok are well-know variations on a type which is found all over the traditional areas of Southeast Asia. They were often carried by resting the handle against the forehead and bending forward, thus leaving the hands free. With their close weave, they were suited to holding and carrying a wide range of commodities such as betel, fruit or rice.

Baskets are often elaborately patterned, either by using differently coloured fibre strands or through the addition of beads and shells. Plant materials were harvested from the immediate environment and traditionally coloured in golds and browns with vegetable dyes; more recently, brightly coloured baskets have been produced using commercial dyes. Basket making, which is done by both men and women in Southeast Asia, is one of the oldest of crafts and basketry forms have changed little over time. Baskets tend to have short lives, thanks to wear and tear and the perishable nature of the materials.

Baskets like these two are of a type well known throughout traditional Southeast Asia and popular with tourists. Consequently, few old ones like these two remain.

Diagonally plaited in a herringbone pattern with wooden base, they were made in Lombok, Lesser Sunda Islands, Indonesia

These baskets were made c.1950.

Traditionally baskets like this were carried by resting the handle against the forehead and leaning forward. They were used in domestic contexts, not only in Lombok but throughout Southeast Asia, for carrying a wide range of commodities such as betel, rice and fruit.
The baskets were purchased in Lombok in the early to mid 1980s by the vendor Sue Tuckwell, probably from the local dealer Sudirman.

Baskets (2), palm/ bamboo/ wood, Lombok, Lesser Sunda Islands, Indonesia, c 1950.

The two baskets are tall and elliptical, beautifully and evenly plaited in a herringbone pattern using thin strips of palm, and lashed decoratively to their wooden bases at the corners. One basket has a finely plaited reinforcing band around top, and a handle formed by threading two lengths of bamboo through holes in the wooden base, through stay loops near the rim, and binding them together at the top for holding.

The second basket is reinforced around the rim and a little below the rim with two bamboo bands which are lashed to the body of the basket. The original bamboo handle is missing and has been replace with strong dark natural fibre string.

Designed: Lombok, Indonesia

Made: Lombok, Indonesia; 1945 - 1955


Used: Lombok, Indonesia

2002/5/4