‘Cepuk’ clothes are purely ritual objects. They are not worn by people in Bali as scarves or shawls. They are hung up displaying their whole length in Hindu temples and during temple feasts, or placed, folded, next to sacrificial offerings.
The present Balinese ‘cepuk’ ritual fabric is made of silk, tightly woven in one thin panel, and dyed using the Ikat technique. This involves the warp threads being bound off and dyed prior to weaving. That means that the weaver needs to know where she needs to dye the threads with which colour before she starts weaving to ensure that afterwards, when she is weaving, the pattern that she planned previously will appear.
The base colour of the present very long cepuk ritual cloth is a rich, dark red, with light-coloured lines (the natural colour of the base material, silk), with small green accents in the decorative motifs.
The transverse patterns are arranged in three edged, vertical rows, separated by two stripes of extremely detailed diagonal patterns. After a transverse woven stripe acting as a border on each narrow side, both narrow sides of the cepuk are finished off with two larger, single-coloured dark red areas. A very rare ritual textile from Bali in excellent condition, completely undamaged.
Dimensions: c. 280 cm x 68 cm. First half of the 20th century. (ME)

Provenance: Austrian private collection.

Lit.: ‘Traditional Indonesian Textiles’ by John Gillow, fig. 73.