Double-spouted vessels, II: in West Malaysia & Singapore (from prehistory to the present day
Tom Harrisson’s 1974 article, the second in a two-part study, documents the survival and revival of double-spouted earthenware vessels in West Malaysia and Singapore, extending the known distribution of this distinctive ceramic form beyond its previously established prehistoric home at Niah Caves, Sarawak. Writing from direct field observation and museum examination, Harrisson argues that the form was likely “invented” in Borneo and spread to Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula following the advent of metal and intensified inter-island contact around 600–700 AD.
Summary
The article builds on Harrisson’s 1971 monograph on Niah Cave double-spouts, which had established a 2,500-year local tradition (c. 1,330 BC to c. 1,000 AD) with clear internal stylistic evolution from asymmetrical upswept spouts to widely separated, bridged forms. The present contribution addresses a gap: no such vessels had previously been published from West Malaysia. Harrisson identifies two museum specimens — one at Muzium Negara (labelled from Salak, Perak) and one at the National Museum, Singapore (from Palembang, Sumatra) — that are so closely similar in size, spout geometry, bridge construction, median ridges, and decorative scheme (vertical clusters of three reddish lines) that he considers a direct craft transfer between Sumatra and Perak highly probable.
The most ethnologically significant section records Harrisson’s visit to the pottery village of Kepala Bendang, Perak, in January 1974, where the family of Wahab bin Awang and others were actively producing double-spouted water-pots. Informants confirmed that the local tradition had been lost and was revived approximately three years earlier when a photograph of the Muzium Negara specimen was brought to the village, likely by an ex-MARA official. Within this short revival period, one potters’ family had already abandoned the bridge — a simplification that partially reverses the slow evolutionary trend documented at Niah. Harrisson notes that the spout assembly now occupies half or more of the vessel’s total height, considerably more emphatic than in any earlier known example, and that consumer demand existed for both bridged and unbridged variants.
Harrisson then situates these findings within a broader Southeast Asian ceramic context. He discusses the rise of the Kendi (single-spout vessel with central filling hole) from Tang dynasty Chinese imports from the 10th–11th centuries onward, which offered a practical alternative and likely contributed to the decline of double-spouting in Borneo. A brief section on a Ming blue-and-white porcelain elephant Kendi with two spouts (Wan Li reign, 1573–1620) in a Singapore private collection suggests that demand for double-spouting persisted in the islands even in the hard-ceramic era. Finally, Harrisson critiques Malleret’s (1968) claim that a Vietnamese bronze vessel with two spouts implies trans-Pacific contact with Meso-America, arguing that the absence of any bridge or linkage on the bronze piece makes comparison with Peruvian examples (which feature hollow cross-channel bridges) misleading, and that all Southeast Asian bridges examined to date are solid.
Key Findings
- Niah Cave double-spouts span c. 1,330–1,120 BC to c. 1,000 AD (approximately 2,500 years), with no examples found elsewhere in Borneo or in any West Malaysian prehistoric site.
- The Muzium Negara vessel (No. E.1869, 1963, H.A.508) is approximately 14 inches high, with two large tubular spouts subtending roughly 40°, one in a “mammary” nipped form; the bridge arcs high above the spout tops, unlike the lower-joining bridges of later Niah Type III.
- The Singapore Museum vessel (No. Z.622) from Palembang, Sumatra, purchased in 1909 for 10 cents, stands 27.5 cm tall and matches the Perak example in seven specific morphological and decorative respects.
- At Kepala Bendang in January 1974, approximately one-twelfth of the village’s pottery output consisted of double-spouted vessels; the unbridged variant was a 1973 personal innovation by the Wahab bin Awang family, while all other local potters retained the bridge.
- Quadruple-spouting with two cross-linking high-arched bridges also occurs in Palembang earthenware, indicating that double-spouting was not the terminal elaboration of the form in Sumatra.
- The Ming elephant Kendi (Wan Li, 1573–1620 AD), 10 inches high, blue and white with a silver central filling mount, represents a rare double-spouted Kendi in porcelain, likely produced for Indonesian or Islamic markets.
Conclusion
Harrisson’s definitive takeaway is that the double-spouted vessel represents a locally invented Bornean form that spread to Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula in the early centuries AD, persisted in Sumatra into the modern era, and was recently revived in Perak through the mediating influence of a museum specimen. The survival and creative adaptation of the form in these two locations — against a general regional trend toward the loss of elaborate ceramic traditions — is, in his view, of the highest ethnological interest and warrants fuller socio-economic study.
Context
- The article draws on direct examination of collections at Muzium Negara (Kuala Lumpur), the National Museum (Singapore), and the Rijksmuseum (Leiden), combined with Harrisson’s own fieldwork at Niah Caves (1954–67) and a January 1974 visit to Kepala Bendang.
- Historiographically, the piece extends the 1971 Niah study into West Malaysia and challenges Malleret’s (1968) trans-Pacific diffusion hypothesis, while tentatively proposing a Bornean origin for the form — an inference Harrisson himself flags as provisional given the absence of intermediate archaeological evidence.