Enrico Hillyer Giglioli

De foto’s in dit bericht zijn foto’s van boeken.
Niet zomaar wat boeken maar wichelboeken.
Boeken uit Indonesië verzameld door Elio Modigliani.
Dit soort boeken staan bekend onder de naam ‘Pustaha’.

Florence, Basilica of San Lorenzo, Pustaha (magische boeken), Indonesia, 1886 – 1894.

Op een website van een kunst- en antiekdealer vond
ik een korte beschrijving van de collectie:

The Florentine Elio Modigliani travelled to the Indonesian islands between 1886 and 1894 and collected many ethnographic items. The collection is important because of this clear provenance and time frame of collecting.

Modigliani travelled through the Batak lands, relying on a rebel leader fighting against the Dutch who led him from the Dutch possessions on Sumatra’s western coast to the eastern coast and then back again by another route. He was able to thus cross Sumatra twice and travel through areas that remained still largely closed to Europeans. His work on the region’s ethnography was recognised across Europe and the Netherlands awarded him the Order of Orange-Nassau.

Batak divination books were known as pustaha and generally the ‘leaves’ are made of bark, most probably the inner bark of the alim tree (a species of aquileria). The books have been known to the western world for several hundred years. There are at least a thousand pustaha in public and private collections. The earliest datable example is in the British Library which was donated in 1764. Most pustaha do not carry dates – provenance and patina are the main tools used in approximating a date. (This is one reason why the Modigliani collection is important.) Pustaha mostly deal with magic, divination and medicine (hadatuon) and tended to be compiled by Batak.