Threads Of Tradition -- Couple's Long-Term Loan Of Almost 500 Pieces Of Indonesian Textiles Is A Great Boon To Museum

This month, the Seattle Art Museum is installing a gallery of Indonesian ikat weavings. It is a new collecting area for the museum, one that represents one of the world's most extraordinary textile traditions.

Most of these textiles are here as a result of the generosity of one couple, Timothy Manring and his wife, Indrastuti Hadiputranto, who spend a few months each year in Seattle. This is their story. ---------------------------------

JAKARTA - It is after dark when Tim Manring and his wife, Tuti, get home from work. They have spent more than an hour threading through Jakarta traffic.

Two men are waiting in the dark, outside their patio door. Quiet words are exchanged.

"Give us a few minutes," Tuti tells them. She and Tim need to drop their briefcases and shed their shoes. They work in international law. Twelve-hour work days, six days a week, leave them exhausted.

A few moments later, they switch on the soft patio light, and sit down outside to catch what breeze they can in Jakarta's stifling heat.

The men heft up a cardboard box and begin to unload its contents. A treasure trove of antique pottery and old stone carvings is carefully unwrapped, piece by piece.

Some evenings, a dealer in antique textiles waits for them, with a bundle of classical ikat weavings and batik sarongs wrapped in a faded bedspread on the back of his bicycle. Dealers often bring new stock here first, because the Manrings are known as discriminating collectors.

Sometimes they buy; sometimes not. This time Tuti asks the dealers to leave several stone carvings with them for a few days while they decide.

The decision to buy costs more each year. Prices have gone up tremendously since Manring, who grew up on a farm outside Pullman, began buying fine ikat textiles in 1970. He had just moved to Jakarta.

"Few people were interested in old textiles then," he recalls. "There were relatively few foreigners in Indonesia.

"Most of the antique dealers sold things from their homes - things like old Chinese porcelains, or antique carvings. Sometimes they would load all their wares inside a big tablecloth and pack it around to potential buyers on a motorcycle."

Despite the personal attention, Manring says, "Things usually were very inexpensive. For a particularly fine ikat weaving, $500 was a large amount to pay." These days a comparable piece would be many times that price.

In 1977 he married a kindred spirit. Indrastuti Hadiputranto - Tuti to those who know her - grew up in Indonesia, and had long collected fine batiks. When they wed, there was no question of black tie and boutonnieres. Manring followed Indonesian tradition; he wore a batik sarong.

In the course of their marriage, the Manrings have moved back and forth several times between Seattle and Jakarta, a sprawling, flamboyant city of 7 million people. They keep a condominium on Seattle's Capitol Hill, but do the major part of their business in Jakarta, where they are building a new home.

Tuti says that when she learned Seattle had only about 500,000 people she assumed Tim would know practically everyone in town.

"The first time he drove me to Pullman to meet his parents, it seemed like endless driving through nowhere," she said. "No houses, nothing. For miles and miles. You never see that in Indonesia." There, small farms and villages fill the green countryside, and people are everywhere.

She also was startled to find that "It's so quiet in the evening in Seattle. Jakarta is so alive; there's always noise. At first Seattle's quiet seemed really strange to me, but as time goes on, I really appreciate it."

Seattle holds a special place in their hearts, as attested by the nearly 500 pieces of ikat textiles they have given to the Seattle Art Museum as long-term loans.

Incredibly, that generous loan barely makes a dent in their collection. Richly patterned sarong lengths fill boxes and lie in stacks in their homes in both Seattle and Jakarta. New pieces are added constantly.

For the Manrings, collecting ranges somewhere between a sport and a passion. They have to search harder for choice textiles than in earlier years. The world has discovered Indonesian arts, and Manring says that although there are many good new pieces, fine old ones are scarce.

A standard 2 1/2-meter sarong-length batik by a famous maker such as Javanese artist Osy Soe Tjoen can cost $1,000. Fine gold-leafed batiks may cost $5,000 each. Good silk batiks cost from $80 to $200. Tuti explains that Javanese pay less for silk batiks than for cotton ones because silk doesn't wear as long. Still, in one of those ironies that abound in the world of art, batik makers may earn as little as $3 a day.

Prices for fine ikats are harder to predict. For one thing, there is no standard length for ikat as there is for batik. Batik is made on a back loom, and its size depends on the size of the weaver.

New ikats are woven regularly, but Manring says they can't substitute for fine old pieces. The use of homespun cotton decreases steadily, and soft, vegetal dyes give way to chemical dyes that allow weavers to achieve intense colors more quickly.

Good books on ikat and batik are easy to find on library shelves these days, but when Manring began collecting, there were none. Unlike his wife, he didn't grow up with easy familiarity with the textiles.

"I had to educate myself by looking, and by living with them," he explains.

Now, he finds that he often knows more about the textiles he's offered than do the dealers who are selling them. "Many of them don't know where their cloth is from," he finds. "Cloth from the island of Sumba is particularly prized, so dealers are apt to call things Sumba cloth regardless of their origin."

Ikats are not flashy art. Their colors are subdued, the patterns intricate. Yet it is difficult to think of an art richer in layers of meaning and skill of execution.

Originally, the Manrings say, they intended to give SAM examples of both ikats and batiks, but found the museum interested only in the ikats. Let's hope that in time that interest expands.

And let's hope that when the galleries with their tall cases of Indonesian textiles are opened to the public at the end of this month, the Manrings will be on hand to receive the thanks we all owe them for sharing their connoisseurship with us.