Malacca lace
This note by Mrs. Bland documents the state of bobbin lace-making in Malacca in the early 1900s, tracing its decline from a fine cotton pillow lace industry to a diminished “biku” (edging) trade, and compares it with related traditions in Palembang and Sarawak.
Summary
Bland describes how fifty years prior, fine cotton pillow lace was made in Malacca and worn by Chiefs and Hajis on their coats and trousers, but that with the adoption of European clothing the art had largely disappeared. The present generation used at most nineteen bobbins compared to the fifty to one hundred or more employed by their grandmothers, and had lost most patterns, bobbins, and pillows to white ants. What remained was “biku” making—coloured silk edging for handkerchiefs and veils—practised chiefly in the Pringgit district by about fifty women, with smaller numbers at Bukit Tempurong and Bukit China. She details the equipment (the “bantal” pillow, “buah” bobbins of wood, horn, or ivory, and pricked-out paper patterns called “Sepesel”), lists the five patterns then in common use, and records the Malay terminology for stitches and tools.
Bland then compares the Malacca tradition with that of Palembang, Sumatra, where the industry was still flourishing and Dutch ladies bought the lace for their kebaya jackets, noting identical terminology (“Bantal,” “Buah,” “Sepesel”) and a shared Portuguese-derived word “renda” for lace. She also describes a more primitive cylindrical pillow used by Dyak women in Sarawak for gold-thread edging called “puntas.” The note closes with a glossary of terms used by her teacher and a tentative effort to revive the industry at the Girls’ School at Pringgit (pp. 273–277).