Tenun

Tenun is woven, not printed. Each thread is placed carefully onto a floor loom passed down through generations. The process is methodical. Threads are measured, dyed, and interlaced to create patterns that emerge only as the cloth takes shape.

A single piece of tenun can take weeks to complete. The result is fabric with texture, weight, and presence—cloth that cannot be replicated by machine.

Photo of the making of Tenun Fabric

The loom itself requires skill to operate. Tension must be maintained. Threads must align. A single mistake can unravel hours of work. Weavers who practice tenun often learned as children, watching mothers or grandmothers work the loom before taking up the practice themselves.

What they create is not simply functional. Each region has its own motifs—geometric patterns, symbolic representations of nature, designs that carry meaning within the community. To wear tenun is to carry a piece of that heritage.

Photo of a woman weaving

Tenun was historically woven for ceremonial, it marked status, identity, and occasion. The complexity of the pattern, the fineness of the thread, and the time required to weave it determined its value.

Today, tenun faces the same challenge as batik: fewer young people are learning the craft. Weaving is slow. It requires focus. The income is uncertain. Many of the weavers we work with are in their fifties, sixties, seventies. They worry the tradition will not outlive them.

We work with tenun because we believe it still belongs in contemporary life. Not as costume. Not as artifact. But as cloth meant to be worn, used, and valued for what it is: evidence of time, skill, and continuity.

Each piece carries centuries of practice and the skill of the hands that wove it—thread by thread, pattern by pattern. It is meant to be kept, worn, and remembered.

Shop Tenun Pieces