The craftspeople of Sarawak

From ancient pottery to embroidery fit for Miss World, meet the producers championing traditional artisanal creations in Malaysia's island region.

- Adrian Phillips

Malaysia’s island region of Sarawak is a treasure trove of relics and rarities. Take a stroll down Carpenter Street in Sarawak’s capital city of Kuching and you’ll see stalls selling wood carvings, colourful beadwork, blankets and the woven mats that line the floor of traditional tribal longhouses. Nearby, at the waterfront, a bazaar of handicraft booths in the historic Steamship Building sells jewellery, paintings and scarves created by some of the country’s leading artisans. They’re guardians of Sarawak’s heritage, preserving skills that date back thousands of years and that might otherwise be lost in the rush to embrace 21st-century technology. 

THE POTTER

NABILAH ABDULLAH

Nabilah Abdullah has been sculpting with clay for nearly 20 years, from one of a dozen workshops in the Sarawak Ceramic Centre, just to the north of Kuching. Nabilah spends each morning making new pieces and each afternoon selling them from her shop, Ally Clay Craft, in Kuching’s Steamship Building. Works in progress fill every shelf of Nabilah’s workshop. There are containers of clay beads, pots waiting to be fired, bowls about to be glazed. I look at a row of elegant leaf-shaped brooches, deep green and highly polished. “They’re made by pressing real leaves into the clay and making a unique imprint,” says Nabilah. “I take inspiration from nature — the rainforest is my supermarket.”

But Nabilah’s consuming passion is a black, amphora-like pot. Evidence of pots like this has been uncovered in the Niah Caves, an archaeological hotspot in the north of the region where a skull was found that dates back around 60,000 years. Nabilah was inspired to create her own following a visit to the Borneo Cultures Museum.