Bunga-bunga Emas yang Dilupai

Within the Malay world, beyond innovative weaving techniques such as the supplementary weft threads of songket or dyeing methods such as the ikat which has lent its name to the technique worldwide, there also exists the art of textile embellishment with delicate gold leaf, known as telepuk. Much like the Korean geumbak, the Malay telepuk owes its origins from the textile artists residing on the Indian subcontinent, however the centuries of adaptation and refinement to local tastes and native cultures have produced an artform that is unique to its own time and place.

The name telepuk itself may indicate the original motifs that grace the finely woven silks and cottons of yore: ancient Malay literary texts indicate the word was used to describe a type of lotus, the nymphaea stellata. But very soon afterwards the word became almost entirely associated with the textile itself, though experts differ on whether it was intended for a metonym of the cloth based on the stamps often carved in floral motifs and then subsequently stamped, or a metaphor of the resulting effect of the foiling which produces shimmering golden flowers on smooth cloth, that glistens not unlike a bed of lotuses on a sunlit lake.

Whether named from the technique or the effect, no doubt a piece of telepuk cloth is a sign of utmost luxury. When mentioned in classical Malay literary works it is almost exclusively used in reference to royal or courtly dress, and the texts would go into detail on the sumptuary laws that dictate its use. Today we refer to these texts as evidence of the longstanding tradition of telepuk cloth in the Malay world, while encouraging its adoption regardless of class or creed.

The telepuk cloth also fascinated the Europeans when they began arriving en masse. In their missives to their respective colonial centres and home, though they described it as some variant of ‘gold leaf gilding’ from India (e.g. Leonard Wray for the Journal of Federated Malay States Museum in 1906). Due to their colonial knowledge of the Indian subcontinent, European commentators would note the similarity or legacy to Indian textile arts, and whether unknowingly or not of Islamic injunction against portraying living beings, would note that the Malay telepuk would only display abstracted geometric patterns.