Reungkan is a woven from the leaves of the Iboh tree, the woven is like a bowl but the size is slightly larger than the usual bowl. Uses as a base for hot rice stoves. As a base for a rice cooker that has just been removed from the fire. That is the reungkan.
Battens are usually used by inland residents. In Aceh, Sumatra, Indonesia, especially the people of the hinterland, until now still use the reungkan as a base for cooking a rice, pots of gravy that have just been removed from the fire after the cooked rice or gravy is cooked and so on.
Not a many people can weave the reungkan, only the ancient elders who can still weave it. A young people now even almost no one can do that. A reungkan can be made from the leaves of coconut trees and iboh trees. Never seen the reungkan has made from the other leaves trees.
But here, we are just discussing about the reungkan which is woven from the leaves of the iboh tree, if you don't pay close attention it will seem strange to anyone who sees the batten because, of course its a shape, is a different made from the shape of a bowl.
Weaving a reungkan is very easy for anyone who is used to it, usually the elders only a spend fifteen or to twenty minutes in weaving the reungkan. For the people of the people inland residents of Aceh it doesn't cost money to make a reungkan.
Made A Reungkan is Not Expensive
They just need to go to the forest and pick a iboh leaves and then bring the iboh leaves to home, dryit for a while and they can immediately be made, be woven into reungkan, they don't need the money, they just need for a little effort.
The reungkan makers can be categorized into the category of extraordinary artists, which from the shape of the reungkan are already very unique but beautiful for the eyes when see it. Then, reungkan makers are top artists in the world. We can say like that for him.
A professional people don't use a lot of technique to make that reungkan, for example, before blinding a reungkan, they must and have to measure the size of the sides, they have to measure the depth and so on, they don't do that anymore. They are a professional people.
My Mother Maker of Reungkan
All of the technicalities of making the rengkan are already on his head. They never studied at school for how to make a rengkan, how to make reungkan they don’t studied at the school, because this knowledge was only passed down from generation to generation, from their previous elders.
In fact, how to make a reungkan can be taught, can studied at a schools, let alone a campuses, for the sake of maintaining its continuity, because weaving is an art, namely the art of the weaving, such as the art of knitting, not many people can knit, let alone weaving.
In the picture is the reungkan from Loh Angen, Paloh Dayah village, which was woven by our mother, the mother of Thayeb Loh Angen and Jamaluddin/Lodin LA. Our mother is old, she is over eighty old, she is still healthy and I hope she will always be healthy and live a long life forever. We really love our mom.
Thank You
April 8, 2023
Kind Regard
Thayeb Loh Angen
Author’s asst. Syukri Isa Bluka Teubai.
All Photo by Jamaluddin-Lodin LA. With the Nikon D7000 Camera, 18-55 Kit Lens.
Captions for All Photos: The ‘Reungkan’ in Paloh Dayah, Muara Satu, the City of Lhokseumawe, Aceh, Sumatra, Indonesia, April 6, 2023.
we have something close to that here too
Wow, where is that, @grandiosae, so cool.