Javanese Lampshade
Authors: margaret Allen
In 1930, Jack and Ranson Mortlock two wealthy pastoralists from South Australia, accompanied by their manager, Ernest Scarfe made a three-month tour through Java, Singapore, Sri Lanka, and India, En route, they filmed their travels and acquired a number of curios and souvenirs to be displayed in Martindale Hall, the Mortlock stately home.
The standard lamp with Javanese vellum lampshade (MH240) currently stands in the billiard room. The lamp, made of black wrought iron and coppery coloured metal, was made for kerosene originally, but converted to electricity at some point.
The very interesting and rather fragile lampshade is made of buffalo hide and incised with a geometric pattern and gilded. The colours, brown, black and white and the geometric patterns are reminiscent of patterns found on Yogyakarta style batik. In August 1930 the Mortlock party spent a day or so in Yogyakarta, the centre of Javanese traditional culture and fine arts. Such lampshades were made there, the home of specialist craftsmen who employed similar skills with buffalo hide to make leather wayang kulit (shadow) puppets.
Indeed, one panel of the lampshade appears to show a silhouette of Drupada, in the style of a wayang kulit puppet. Drupada was an important figure in the Mahabharata, an ancient Hindu epic frequently performed with wayang kulit puppets in Java. The Mahabharata, the longest epic poem ever written, deals with the Kurukshetra war, dated to c 3,200BCE, where two groups of princely cousins compete for power. It explores philosophical issues, such as the goals of life. Drupada was the king of the Panchalas. When he refuses to help his childhood friend. Drona, who has fallen on bad times, the latter vows to avenge this insult. Ultimately Drona does kill Drupada, but, as he says ‘with tears in his eyes’.
It seems most likely that the Mortlock party purchased the lamp nearby the kraton, or Sultan’s palace. This was at the centre of Yogyakarta’s courtly cultural life. When the Mortlock party was there, the Sultan was Hamengkubuwono VIII. The kraton was the focus of the Mortlock party’s brief itinerary in Yogyakarta. When they arrived in Yogyakarta on the evening of the 7th August, they visited the palace enclosure to see the dancers performing. The next morning, they went back to the palace and saw and filmed the ‘Sultan’s reception and review of troops in honour of Mohammed’s birthday’.1 The film shows the Dutch officials arriving and meeting the Sultan and then the Sultan’s troops and the many men and women retainers who staffed the palace, parading.
In the first decades of the twentieth century, the traditional arts in Yogyakarta were declining under colonialism, as the Javanese nobility could no longer afford to commission, in particular, the traditional silver work for which Yogyakarta was renowned. The ‘Pakarjan Ngajogijakarta’ foundation was set up in c 1932 by Javanese aristocrats and some Dutch enthusiasts who wished to support local craftsmen.2 They helped develop patterns and styles which would appeal to a different market, namely the Dutch colonists and American tourists. The lamp and its shade are such a hybrid object, combining the traditionally Javanese imagery and background patterns on the lampshade, with a modern western style kerosene, later an electric lamp. Such a lamp and shade were made for use by Dutch colonial officials and businesspeople residing in the Dutch East Indies. It is interesting that the Mortlock party purchased it and brought it back to Martindale Hall.
I am grateful to Dr. Marjolien van Asdonck and Dr. Pim Westerkamp, Stichting Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen Amsterdam, for sharing information.
Footnotes
- J. A. T. Mortlock diary, 8 August 1930, Tumby Bay Museum, National Trust of South Australia. ↩︎
- For more information about the foundation see ‘A Yogya’, https://www.925-1000.com/a_yogya.html#google_vignette and ‘Yogyalarge’, https://spoonplanet.com/yogyalarge.html , accessed on 19 Nov 2024. ↩︎