Power and Gold: Jewelry from Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines

From the book:

The world of jewelry which we invite you to enter is that of the peoples of the outer islands of Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines - ethnic groups beyond Java and Bali that have retained their rituals and myths to a relatively large degree, even in an era of increasing contact with Islam and Christianity. Historically these outer islands existed on the peripheries of the old Indianized court states and came into contact with Europeans relatively late (sometimes in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries). These island cultures boasted superb village art traditions.

The ethnic jewelry described in this catalogue was investigated through fieldwork and archival research by Susan Rodgers, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Ohio University. She obtained her Ph.D. in 1978 from the University of Chicago, and most of her previous research has focused on oral literature, ritual, and social change among North Sumatra's Angkola Batak. Rodgers speaks Angkola Batak and Indonesian, the language used for the jewelry research in that country. The field study which she carried out for this exhibition and catalogue has resulted in the preservation of valuable information which otherwise might have died with the extraordinarily important current generation of elderly village ritual experts.

The Barbier-Mueller Museum in Geneva, based on collections which began as early as 1918, has supported many research projects and published a dozen catalogues and books on the art of ethnic groups in Africa, Oceania, and Indonesia to accompany exhibitions of objects chosen exclusively from the Museum's own collections. In collaboration with The Asia Society Galleries in New York and the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service in Washington, the Barbier-Mueller Museum is now presenting this catalogue and exhibit on Island Southeast Asian jewelry.

Many of the book's numerous illustrations have never before been published, and most of the ornaments are themselves being exhibited for the first time. Some of them seem to be the only examples to have survived modernization in the ethnic regions from which they come. There they served mainly as symbols of rank, as ritual gifts in a variety of socially important exchanges, or as powerfully charged religious objects.

Whether made of solid gold, or of modest wickerwork, all are also proof of a highly developed sense of form. Once again they show that jewelry making deserves to be considered beyond the bounds of arts and crafts.