Motif seni hias koleksi cutam di Jabatan Muzium Malaysia
List of Authors
  • Raja Suriaty Raja Ahmed , Sabzali Musa Kahn

Keyword
  • niello, nielloware, decorative arts, motifs, material culture

Abstract
  • This writing is a report on the study of niello’s collection motif that has been carried out in five locations, namely the National Museum, the Perak Museum, the Malay World Ethnology Museum, the National Textile Museum and the repository of the Collection Management Division, Department of Museums Malaysia. Niello is a decorative art technique applied to gold, silver and copper carpentry. Niello is a black alloy that is used to fill in carved decorations with the aim of giving attractiveness and a contrasting color to silver items. The community recognizes the niello technique or translated into English as niello or nielloware based on the blue and dark blue colors that result on the surface of gold, silver and copper carpentry carvings. This study of motifs of decorative art was carried out in order to identify the motifs found in niello’s collection. As a result, a total of 127 of niello’s collections in the five locations have been identified and categorized into 18 types of material culture. From the 18 types of cultural equipment, the researcher has made observations and classified the samples into four motif themes, namely plant motifs, animal motifs, Hindu-Buddhist figure motifs and Arabic inscription motifs. The researcher's observations of each sample are made with references from book sources, field studies, journals and also interviews with the respondents. The results of the study show that motifs with Hindu-Buddhist influence such as mythical animal motifs (garuda, kinnari and kinnara, kochasri and others), 12 zodiac animal motifs, lotus-based plant motifs (kranok, dao klip bua and lai dok bua , lai bai bua, dok lai and kan bai bua), jasmine flowers and cotton flowers as well as 3 Hindu Buddhist religious figures (Rama, Hanuman and the deity Theppanom) were found in the collection of cutam at the five locations of the study. Also found is three niello pending with Arabic number inscription motif.

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