Malay hats and dish covers
C. A. Gibson-Hill, a British colonial administrator and ethnographer based in the Federation of Malaya, published this descriptive catalogue of Malay plaited and sewn headwear and food covers in 1951, drawing on fieldwork and a private collection assembled in 1947–1948. The article documents approximately nine hat types and ten dish-cover types still in current use across the peninsula, while arguing that the introduction of European cotton thread, synthetic dyes, and commercial competition from external producers was rapidly eroding the diversity of local patterns that had existed only a generation or two earlier.
Summary
Gibson-Hill’s central concern is one of documentation under conditions of rapid cultural change. He frames the article explicitly as a record of what remains, acknowledging that the account “would have been far more interesting” had it been compiled seventy to eighty years earlier, before the replacement of traditional rotan fibres with cheap crochet cotton and before the isolation of riverine communities was broken by trade networks (p. 128). The historical problem he identifies is twofold: first, the material substitution (rotan fibre for cotton thread, natural dyes for synthetic ones) has altered the quality and character of the work; second, a small number of production centres—principally Trengganu on the east coast and the Kuala Sungei Bahru area in Malacca on the west—have come to dominate the market, their products spreading at low prices and displacing local variants (pp. 128, 145).
The article is organized regionally, proceeding clockwise from Kelantan through Trengganu, Pahang, Johore, Malacca and Negri Sembilan, Selangor, Perak, and Kedah. Within each region Gibson-Hill describes the materials employed, the construction method (sewn work for hats, plaited work for dish-covers), the characteristic shapes, decorative patterns, and rim finishes, and the economic context of production and sale. A significant portion of the analysis is devoted to the technical details of construction: the number of units in the sewn work (six, twelve, or twenty-four), the derivation of the plaiting technique from the Malacca Anyam gila method modified to produce a cone rather than a flat sheet, and the various methods of securing and decorating the rim (pp. 131–136). The primary sources are the author’s own collection of specimens, supplemented by examination of holdings in the British Museum, the Pitt-Rivers Museum at Oxford, and the Cambridge Department of Anthropology, though he found no Malayan material in these collections that was new to him (p. 127).
A recurring theme is the gendered division of labour: hats are normally sewn by men, dish-covers plaited by women, and this distinction holds consistently across all regions described (p. 131). Gibson-Hill also notes the functional logic behind certain forms—the beehive shape of the Kelantan fisherman’s hat offering “relatively little purchase to the wind” (p. 138)—and the practical adaptations made by users, such as the Malacca fishermen who bind two cheap hats together and coat them in buffalo dung and coconut oil to produce a durable article lasting ten to twelve years (p. 149).
Key Findings
- The Kelantan fisherman’s hat (No. 1) measures 12–15 inches in brim diameter and 8–9 inches in height, was priced at 70–80 cents, and was being replaced by the cheaper Trengganu hat (40–50 cents) across the Kelantan coast; by 1947–48, “about half or more” of the hats in the area were already of the Trengganu pattern (pp. 138, 145).
- The Kedah fisherman’s hat (No. 9) is the most technically intricate hat in Malaya, its brim secured by a criss-cross webbing of double hitches made over eighteen successive circuits, with every eighteenth knot tied on each circuit; it sold at $3 in 1948 and measured approximately 16½ inches in diameter by 5½ inches in height (pp. 154–155).
- The Perak (Matang/Dindings) dish-cover (No. 19) is the only Malayan cover decorated with painted bamboo spathes laid over a mengkuang core; Winstedt’s 1909 description confirms the basic process was unchanged, though “dragon’s blood” colouring had been replaced by bright enamel paints; the cover sold for $2.50–$3 (pp. 153–154).
- The Malacca painted dish-cover (No. 16), produced mainly at Kuala Sungei Bahru and Telok Kemang, was a highly commercialized product: a good worker could complete the plaiting in twenty minutes, producers sold to agents at 50–60 cents, and retail prices ranged from 80 cents in Malacca to $1.50 in Penang; by 1947 the covers were reaching as far north as Kota Bharu (p. 149).
- The plaited dish-covers derive their technique from the Malacca Anyam gila method but use five initial strips rather than six, producing a cone and ensuring that all radiating patterns and rosette arrangements are five-sided or multiples of five—a feature that distinguishes them from all other local plaited work (p. 134).
- The Paka and Dungun dish-covers (No. 13), made from Licuala (sah) leaf, were noted for their superior colour retention compared to Lontar or Pandanus, and sold for $1.50–$2.00; the sah strips could be cut as narrow as six to ten per inch, producing work finer than any other in the peninsula (p. 146).
Conclusion
Gibson-Hill’s definitive takeaway is that the diversity of Malayan hat and dish-cover patterns was already in advanced decline by the late 1940s, driven by the convergence of material substitution and market consolidation. He presents the catalogue not as a celebration of a living tradition but as an urgent record of forms that “will disappear before this double competition” from both external imports and the internal spread of a few dominant production centres (p. 128). The article thus functions as a baseline document: a snapshot of what survived at the moment when industrial materials and commercial logic were about to homogenize a craft tradition that had previously been characterized by regional specificity and household-level production.
Context
- Gibson-Hill was a senior officer in the Malayan Civil Service and a prolific contributor to the JMBRAS; his ethnographic work was conducted in his administrative capacity, and the article reflects the colonial-era framing of indigenous crafts as objects of systematic documentation and classification.
- The study’s historiographical contribution lies in being the first detailed typological account of Malayan plaited and sewn headwear and food covers; prior to this, only Winstedt (1909) had briefly mentioned a single dish-cover type, and no comprehensive survey of the forms, materials, or regional distributions had been attempted.