from the collection

Burial shroud, or
Tais merobo
Bobonaro ??
Recent ??

112 x 210 cm

Courtesy:
Tim Babcock

Tim's comments:

For men or women. Bought in Kamanasa, Malaka Tengah, Belu district, NTT in 1996 from a woman who claimed to have made it herself about 52 years previously when she was about 15 (It appears almost new, in excellent condition); says the brown/red dyes made from nenuk and uhu trees; this type of cloth is not described in the Jacobson/Yeager book, but I saw one other with a blue background in that village and anoth with a yellow background in the Museum Negeri NTT in Kupang (locked collection).

I am not sure that this piece was actually made in Bobonaro, or by someone who was born/grew up in Bobonaro, but various pieces of information suggest that people living now in Kamanasa are at least descended from refugees from Bobonaro (possibly ca. 1912?), so that there is a cultural connection - and the patterns may be useful to compare with current or old patterns in use in Bobonaro to see if they are the same or related. It would be great to learn that some old weaver in Bobonaro said "wow, that is just like a tais that my grandmother made" or something like that.

Ruth Yeager says the name "merobo" probably derives from the place name Maurobo in the Bobonaro district, from where the refugees fled to Malaka Tengah several decades ago. Ruth also thinks that the cloth is not as old as claimed, that the thread is all commercial, and that the dyes are all or mostly chemical.