Gateways of Entrance and Egress: Traditional Indonesian Doors in Global Collections

Frame & Door for a Beehive House | *Euba Ekedodio*
© Museo di Storia Naturale dell'Università di Firenze | Italy

Gateways of Entrance and Egress

Traditional Indonesian Doors in Global Collections

Curated by Steven G. Alpert

The oldest evidence of a surviving wooden door is a Neolithic-era portal from a stilt house that once rose above Lake Zurich (Switzerland). It is over 5,000 years old, finely hinged, and fashioned from poplar, hardwood, or angiosperm that is easy to work and still used to make furniture, cabinets, and doors. Egyptian tomb paintings also reveal images of decorated doors that were painted some 4,000 years ago. Of course, doors most likely date back to much earlier times. Fast forward. If I had to choose my own favorite Western wooden porte, it would unhesitatingly be a late Viking (ca. 1100 AD) door from the famous stave church at Urnes, Norway. With its interlocking protective animals, one could say that this strikingly carved door, along with its posts and lintels, are rare survivors of the Curvilinear Style(s) that once broadly spanned northern Europe, crossing the Asian steppes to China and whose geographic range ends with remarkably well-carved doors hailing from the Island of Borneo. Decorated doors span the globe and include many cultural and historical horizons.

North Door with Carved Door Jambs
Urnes Stave Church in Ornes, Norway

In many parts of the world, carved doors or doorways reinforce and embellish themes of identity, power, and protection. They are also prominently used or invoked in rites of passage ceremonies. Let us "cross the threshold" is a term that has resonated down through the ages. Doors and entryways are so deeply imprinted in our psyche as ingresses to sanctuary or as defensive barriers — that they became, in many locales and cultures, a primary symbol for embodying transition, transformation, and liminality — from their first appearance as practical entryways to becoming thoughtful, eye-dazzling creations.

This month, we are celebrating finely carved and embellished wooden doors from a number of traditional cultures that span the Indonesian archipelago. This first introduction illustrates decorated doors from the small islands of Enggano and Mentawai off the West coast of Sumatra to the island of Timor in the East. In the future, Part II will include doors from Indonesia that reflect Indic (Buddhist and Hindu) influences and doors inspired by the vision and aesthetic sensibilities of Islam. The doors illustrated here and in our galleries range from house and grain storage doors to the doors of high aristocrats or chiefs to doors that mark the divide between the living and the dead.

Model of an Enggano house | *Euba Kakario*
Before 1883
Wood, palm leaf, rattan
RV-370-3023
© Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen

The Engganese once lived in distinctive beehive-shaped homes. Constructed on stout pylons, these dwellings have a decidedly Polynesian feel to them in a matrilineal society where women possessed the dwelling and controlled the cycle of what were known as kaleak baba ceremonies. These included feasts where high-ranking women donned crowns with remarkable crouched figures (said to represent the vanquished) and danced while festooned with beaded jewelry and fancy hip ornaments. During the kaleak baba, the fertility of the land was celebrated, and the community's harmonious relationship with the forest was reaffirmed. This marvelous door, a masterpiece of Indonesian art, is now housed in the Museo do Storia Naturale dell' Universita di Firenze (Florence). It was collected in 1891 by Elio Modigliani (from the same family as the famous painter). Like others before him, he provided some context for further understanding the dominant role of women in old Enggano culture in his 1894 volume, L'Isola delle Donne (The Island of Women).

Everything about this doorway is provocative and, in fact, arrestingly female. The door's frame possibly conjures a cervical or birth canal-like opening. What messages was it intended to invoke? The door's ovoid jambs are fluid, seemingly bicornuate, with a thickened protrusion at its top that kept any overhead seeping moisture at bay. It also informs us that someone coming in from the outside, from a hostile world, needed to bend their head and genuflect before wriggling their bodies through the house's entryway. The actual oval depicts a splayed-legged woman, perhaps in the act of birth. Behind her are two large distinctive eyes as if to further tie her to the umbilicus of ancestral memory.

A second memorable porte from this general geography is a well-carved hardwood door from Rereiket, Siberut, the northernmost isle in the Mentawai Islands. It is now housed in the Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen. This door depicts a langur (Presbytis potenziani) that is endemic to Mentawai (Schefold:176). What makes it special is its fine combination of material, adzing, and the locomotion of the langur. These are locally known as joja. Dr. Reimar Schefold, the major ethnographer of the Sakkudei tribe, was the first person who made us aware of the lively ways in which Mentawaians can depict an animal's movement. Along with an engaged head and straight tail, it is the clever inversion of the langur's front legs that conveys the impression that this primate can move quickly and climb well.

Communal houses were a preeminent feature in many traditional Indonesian cultures. The grand aristocratic dwellings of the Batak world of North Sumatra, Timor, Borneo, and Toraja, among others, included beautifully decorated doors. Such houses were and still are considered living entities, representing a layer or place for humans to dwell within a tripartite universe safely. Toraja culture also centers around the prerogatives of the high-born, where wealth and prestige are measured in buffalo (tedong), in titles, and in the great noble houses known as tongkonan. Befitting those values and its owner's pedigree, entryway doors are sometimes carved with a buffalo's head in bold relief with an abstract protrusion emerging from the buffalo's head that is said to represent the trunk of the tree of life. Two such compositions are illustrated here. The first is at UCLA's Fowler Museum, while the second, a simpler though well-proportioned door, is currently being stewarded by Yale University Art Gallery. These are two of the most artistically rendered 'buffalo doors' extant in museum collections.

Toraja doors that depict heroic human figures have another purpose. These were used to set the boundaries between the living and the dead. An imposing, well-known door from the area around Rembon depicts a rare full-figured tattooed warrior whose legs extend below the door's sill, which, in conjunction with its up-raised arms, symbolically project receptivity and warning. The background of most doors was filled in with carved protective devices surrounding the central figure. In this case, these are water weeds (pa'tangke lumu) that move like rising smoke or a slow current that is meant to knit everything securely together into a powerful composition. The second door, a masterwork of Toraja's expression, is plain yet perpetually satisfying. Here, a well-proportioned female figure is effortlessly riding and melding with the life force of the buffalo; her vulva and the head of the animal perfectly merge, while the tip of the buffalo's horns and her hands are in a sustained gesture, further casting or suggesting a benediction of fertility and fecundity. The animal's ears (pa'talinga) invoke alertness and a prayer for continued prosperity.

Dayak man near painted panels and a door painted with serpentine figures
Dr. H.F. Tillema
1932
RV-A440-p-104
© Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen

Having begun this introduction with a European door also in the curvilinear style, a close examination of Kayanic and related Dayak doors from Borneo speaks volumes about their carvers' creative imagination and artistic skills. In Borneo, doors were sometimes employed at either end of a longhouse but are most commonly used to denote the apartment of a chief, an aristocrat, or the highest-ranking longhouse member(s). Generally, older doors are also small enough so that one must lower their body to enter. Aside from crossing a threshold with respect, this had a practical component as smaller doorways allowed house defenders to easily attack an enemy as they leaned forward in a momentarily awkward position. In traditional Indonesian society, where nothing is wasted, the size, themes, and details on doors often reflect practical choices imbued with mythical and/or philosophical connotations. (See: Alpert: 133, Eyes of the Ancestors)

A good example that illustrates this is a complete and original doorway and frame from East Kalimantan now in the Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen that was field collected in the 1950s. It's a chief's door. One enters through the body of a heart-shaped-faced splayed animal surrounded by several vigorously rendered protective creatures or aso. Other doors that reflect the apogee of Borneo's Curvilinear Style include magnificent Berawan and Kejeman chiefs' doors from the Borneo Cultures Museum, Sarawak. In Borneo, the range of door styles reflects its tribe of origin. Also showcased here are examples of a striking Kayan door from the Tinjar River area of Sarawak and a well-carved and meticulously colored Apo Kayan door. Rounding out the doors illustrated from Borneo are two other examples. The first reflects Iban(ic) carving traditions, while the second is a little-known door collected before 1910 that the Museum Fünf Kontinente, Munich, now stewards. Museum notes describe it as coming from 'East Borneo' but without a direct tribal appellation. While I have seen carvings from Bidayuh groups in the Western part of Sarawak and the Kantu' Mualang or Kendayan-related peoples from Kalimantan that remind me of this door, its exact group remains unidentified. It is a very fine and old door. With its coupling of a large snake, saurians, quadrupeds, and a human figure, there is something both protective and transformative about its imagery. Note that below the human-like figure is an anthropomorphic creature that resembles the human figure above it, but clearly with a saurian-like head. The enigmatic storyline behind the creatures depicted in this composition remains a mystery outside of its traditional context.

On the island of Timor, particularly in the West Belu, a region that straddles the borders of Timor-Leste (East Timor) and Indonesian Timor, noble Tetun speakers traditionally lived in large communal houses. The philologist and missionary pastor, Pieter Middlekoop, recorded that traditional marriages were known as matsau ume nanan, literally "the marriage (of entering into) the interior of the house." That means that a husband stays within the house of his in-laws and thus participates in the family magic (nono) of his wife. There are generally two doors to these dwellings — one for females and one for males.

Given the idea that a great house is 'a living entity,' various parts of it are assigned values or names that reflect parts of the human body. Here, the front door is exclusively used by post-pubescent men at the "face" of the house. The door itself is referred to as "the eye of the house." It marks the transition point from a decidedly female inner world of the great house into a broader, more dangerous 'hot' or outside male world. In accordance with concepts of ownership and matrilineal descent, the house's largest room, "the womb of the house," is situated rear near the hearth, the house's ritual pillar, and the area where a newborn's placenta is buried. This is all near to the building's rear entryway, which is referred to as the 'vagina' door. A house's two doors are complementary portals that together are poetically referred to as "the steps that lead to the source of life."

These house doors are frequently adorned with images of heirloom jewelry, headhunting symbols, breasts, saurians, or large geometrically keyed designs, many of which are of high artistic value. The most intriguing door type depicts corresponding male and female figures in raised high relief that denote where men and women generally enter the house. Few of these doors have survived. Among them is an unusual variant from the Dallas Museum of Art. Fertility and ancestral connection merge here in an unusually (for Indonesia) expansive rotund female figure with oversized breasts. As a 'female' entry point, her attributes suggest reproductive power and a connection with previous generations of women. She is surrounded by key and diamond-shaped geometric framing whose optical qualities accentuate the importance of her presence.

Seventeen Indonesian doors are featured here, though many more are to be found in our galleries. A case can be made that, within its geography, the archipelago has a more diverse and interesting range or aggregation of decorated doors than any traditional cultural area. Doors are a rich subplot in this part of the world, one well worthy of our deepest appreciation and further exploration.

— Steven G. Alpert, founder of Art of the Ancestors