Antique Sumba ikat - Queen and frogs

Product: Large ikat in orange, ochre and blue showing 4 queens and masks. In yellow and rust, the detail of the woven borders shows 6 frogs. Origin: Sumba. 330 x 137 cm

Passion Textile: Sale exhibition of Sumba ikats

STORIE is once again honored to exhibit rare and precious fabrics from the Marine Biras Collection.

The ikat textiles of Sumba, an isolated island in the southeast of the Indonesian archipelago, are the way for current generations to pass their teachings on to future generations. Each piece is unique and expresses a single artisan or community.

Ikat, from the Indonesian verb mengikat, "to bind, to tie", is a very old and very sophisticated resist-dyeing method. When dyeing the thread, the parts that should stay free of a given color are protected by plant ties knotted around the warp. The skein is then dipped in the dye, and the process is repeated for each other shade, before the thread goes back on the backstrap loom. The more colors there are, the more skilled and demanding the work. By extension, the word ikat also names the resulting piece of cloth.

This textile tradition, listed on UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, is now studied as an example of textile design of the highest quality, and is more commonly found in museums or private collections.

Marine Biras: A lifetime of passion

Born on February 14, 1938, Marine Biras grew up in Vietnam, in the days of Indochina, in the north of the country where her father ran a gold mine. Back in France, she studied at the Arts Décoratifs, married a painter, Francis Biras, and lived among artists all her life.

In the 1970s and 80s, she ran a stand at the Saint-Ouen flea market, specializing in 1930s clothing, where she also created clothes cut from old linen bed sheets.

She then opened a gallery of ethnic textiles, "textiles from here and elsewhere", on rue Lobineau in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, where she showed pieces from every continent, Ikats, Indigos, Kente, Bogolans, highlighting the artisans and their techniques, along with contemporary designers. Her collection today reflects her passion for textiles from around the world.