Superb Maloh Dayak Noblewoman’s Beaded Vest (Sape Buri or Sape Manik)

This splendid vest or sleeveless jacket is beaded front and back with complex ancestor motifs. Heavily beaded jackets and vests were durable and so were seen as a source of power and longevity for the wearer. Trade beads were expensive and so such a vest was an ostentatious display of wealth and status too.

It is composed of trade cotton fabric, glass trade beads, metal sequins, small metal bells, and cotton ikat cloth as a lining.

Such vests were worn by high status Maloh women on festive and ceremonial occasions. The vest is decorated with red, green, black, yellow, pale blue, orange and colourless glass trade beads arrayed as human figures (kakaletau) which represent slaves amid fern-like or ‘hooked’ patterns (kait, karawit).

Maloh society was heavily stratified and in the past, the Maloh ruling class (samagat) owned slaves. On the death of a noble, slaves were sacrificed so that their spirits could accompany that of the noble in the afterlife. They were regarded as guardian and ancestor figures.

The lower edge of the vest is decorated with a fringe of strings of beads and metal bells.

(The Maloh are a Dayak sub-ethnic group found mostly in West Kalimantan, a province of Indonesia. The island of Borneo is shared between Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia.)

See a related example in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

There are minor losses to the fringe of bells at the bottom of the vest, and minor losses to the body of the vest, but largely the vest is intact, stable, and in very fine condition. It is rare now to find a complete Maloh beaded vest.

The vest is accompanied by a custom-made display stand.