Plaiting bamboo hats

At first viewing this is a timeless image: three Sundanese hat plaiters engaged in a traditional craft, the finer points of which are handed down from generation to generation. Closer inspection reveals a date: circa 1910. The photograph does not seem to have been made in the natural working environment of the main subjects, a hat factory in Tangerang. Everything points to a corporate presentation in a special ocation.
The prominence of the hats is noteworthy. The carefully composed setting suggests that this photograph was taken in a studio. This idea is reinforced by the fact that the photograph is part of a series that shows the various stages of bamboo hat production in exactly the same place. But the location in one of these high-quality images differs from the rest, indicating that in all likelihood this series was made by a professional photographer, but not in his studio.
The photographs were probably taken at a pasar malam (annual fair), which included arts and crafts demonstrations. Annual fairs were organised in Surabaya and other cities from 1905 by the District Commissioner (controleur) Johan Ernst Jasper (1874–1945) to create a larger market for indigenous arts and crafts. Interest in indigenous arts and crafts blossomed around 1900 and gained momentum after the announcement of the ‘Ethical Policy’, by which the Netherlands had to assume greater responsibility for the welfare of the local population. Developing indigenous arts and crafts was one of the means to improve the locals’ economic position.

The photograph of the hat plaiters was reproduced in 1912 in the first volume of the five-volume series De Inlandsche Kunstnijverheid in Nederlandsch Indië, which resulted from the technical-artistic research conducted by Jasper and Mas Pirngadie (1875–1936) that had been commissioned by the colonial government.At about the same time the image was published by the Haarlem firm Kleynenberg & Co. as a school poster with the caption: ‘Plaiting hats for Europe, West Java’. Steps were made to enter the European market.
A few years earlier, wood carvers, mat and hat plaiters, weavers and batik makers from the Netherlands East Indies also demonstrated their crafts at the 1910 Brussels World Fair. Photographs such as this appeared in school classrooms, as picture postcards and in Happy Families card games, in magazines and as reproductions in photograph albums. This broad distribution ensured the demonstrations reached a far wider audience than only the visitors to the annual fairs. For the first time the craftsmanship of the indigenous population was deliberately presented as an artform to the wider public.

Jongmans, R. Indigenous arts and crafts. In: 'Photographs of the Netherlands East Indies at the Tropenmuseum'. Amsterdam: KIT Publishers, 2012, p.42

17 x 22,8cm (6 11/16 x 9in.)

Source: collectie.tropenmuseum.nl