songket

Songket is traditional Indonesian cloth with gold thread. It is known all over Indonesia especially in Sumatra. In term of quality,  the best songket is said to come  from Palembang.  It is given the nickname "Queen of All Fabrics". Sparkling golden color and luster that glows in the woven fabric, gives a value of its own and shows the greatness of the people who make it. When you look at a series of yarns and gold thread, woven neatly arranged through symmetric patterns, you can see that this fabric is made by people who understand the skills of the various ways to make quality songket cloth, for they are able to decorate the fabric with various designs. This capability is not somethong that  anyone can do, expertise and precision is absolutely necessary to make a Palembang songket. This knowledge is usually obtained by means of heredity, handed down from generation to generation.
Palembang songket raw materials are various kinds of yarn, such as cotton thread or yarn made of silk. To make a quality songket some of the materials   like white silk yarn is imported from India, China or Thailand. Before being woven, the raw material is dyed with the desired color. Dominant color of Palembang songket is red. However, today the weavers of Palembang already use a variety of colors, the colors used for textiles.
The materials needed to make songket, among others are  looms, rungsen, gold thread, red thread, baliro, sticks, reeds, pleting and others. Making songket requires perseverance, tenacity, and patience. If you do it  in a hurry  the results won’t be  good. The time spent  to weave a piece of  songket usually is between 15 days to one month. This  does not include making motifs which is quite comlicated.  So totally,  the time required to make a  songket is a  month and a half.
Songket motifs are usually given   a golden hue. The gold colored motif made of gold thread. There are three types of gold thread, the cabutan, sartibi and , Bangkok. Cabutan gold thread is  obtained from old songket cloths which are  partially damaged, to be used  again. Cabutan gold thread is still strong because it is made of cotton thread dipped in 24-carat liquid gold. The second type, Sartibi gold thread is  golden thread of synthetic yarn made  in Japan. The fine thread is    not shiny and will have lighter, more refined weaving  results. The third type of gold thread that is the  shiny Bangkok thread which is  imported from Bangkok.
According to its motifs  Palembang songket are devided into several types among others Songket Lepus. Lepus means covering, so it meanss this  songket  is covered with golden thread almost in  all parts of the fabric. Golden thread with high quality is imported from China. Sometimes gold thread songket are taken from a very old (hundreds of years) songket. Because the fabric has  become brittle, the  gold thread embroidered is taken off from the  fabric then woven back to become a new songket. Lepus Songket is supposed  to be the highest quality and most expensive. As implied by the name, this songket is lepus or covered  with various  motifs. Eacch motif has it name like Lepus ilintang or stars, anggur or  grapes, berantai or  chain ulir or  spiral, and many  others.
Another well known motif  is tawur songket motifs. At tawur songket design the motifs  do not  cover the entire surface of the cloth but  spread in clusters. As with songket Lepus, songket tawur also has various names according to the motifs like   songket tawur lintang or stars, songket tawur tampak manggis or mangosteen, songket tawur nampan perak or  silver tray, and others.
Songket s generally used as traditional clothing among  Palembang people to attend the marriage ceremony, baby hair shaving ceremony and as a dancer dress for traditional Gending Sriwijaya or welcome dance.

taken from :  http://en.voi.co.id/voi-features/4970-songket-palembang