Kain Salele / Kain Koja
Salele is the traditional supplementary weft patterned cotton cloth of the North Maluku Sultanates — Ternate and Tidore — produced for royal ceremony and aristocratic dress in a tradition directly linked to the global spice trade economy of the 15th–18th centuries. The cloth uses a supplementary weft technique producing geometric and Islamic-influenced patterns in gold and colored thread on a plain cotton ground. As the Ternate and Tidore Sultanates were among the most commercially connected polities in pre-colonial Southeast Asia — receiving Chinese, Indian, Arab, Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch traders — the Salele's pattern vocabulary reflects this extraordinary cosmopolitan history. The tradition nearly ceased after the decline of Sultanic power but is being actively revived through the surviving Sultanic institutions.
Risk level: Critically Endangered · Not inscribed
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