L

ely Maria Goreti, 42, started her songke (woven fabric) business in Flores, East Nusa Tenggara (NTT) some 12 years ago.

Today, the founder of Lely Artshop is confident that her business and the songke tradition will flourish alongside the rising popularity of tourism in the province.

'€œI started the songke business from scratch. I bought various songke in the villages in Greater Manggarai and encouraged the women there to start weaving songke again,'€ Lely told The Jakarta Post on the sidelines of a crafts exhibition organized by the Tourism Ministry in Labuan Bajo, Flores.

Lely said she decided to focus on the business after realizing that songke was highly sought-after by tourists. Finding it difficult to find reliable supplies of quality songke, she decided to organize several women from the ancient village of Todo into a weaving group.

Lely provided them with the equipment and the yarn and let them do the rest, collecting and then marketing the finished product.

'€œI hand over the proceeds to the weavers,'€ Lely said.

The curiosity shown by local and foreign tourists visiting Komodo National Park in West Manggarai later inspired her to market songke motifs native to the Greater Manggarai community.

One of the songke motifs used by Greater Manggarai residents during traditional ceremonies like funerals and marriages has a chicken-eye design; it is locally called mata manuk.

She said a mata manuk songke cost Rp 500,000 (about US$42).

'€œPeople regard it as expensive, but it is actually cheap, as the materials are expensive and the weaving requires a long time due to the [demands of] precision and intricacy,'€ she said.

Lely also sells woven fabrics native to other regencies in NTT, including Sumba, Sikka, Ngada and Ende. She buys them from weavers and sells them at her art shop at the Komodo Airport.

'€œMy business may still be slow right now, but future opportunities are wide open and in line with tourism development in Flores. The international community'€™s admiration for the Komodo dragon also gives me hope to sustain the business,'€ she said.

Separately, local craftsperson and traditional garment designer Helena Nahim discussed her products, which include bags made from pandanus leaves called rea paired with songke.

'€œA rea bag combined with songke costs Rp 150,000, while a songke shirt is very expensive because the sewing is meticulous and intricate,'€ she said.

Helena realized that it was important to promote her products to a wider market, so she began to join exhibitions to get the word out.

'€œMy creations combining songke were once displayed at a traditional fabric show at Hotel La Prima in Labuan Bajo during the peak of the Sail Komodo event in September 2013,'€ she said.

Lely said besides taking parts in exhibitions, she also used the Internet to learn about the development of ethnic fabrics in the fashion world.

The effort to revive the popularity of woven fabrics has also been undertaken by the Waenakeng Village Creative Center Community in Poco Rutang village, Lembor district, West Manggarai. Group leader Rofina Kartini said her group comprised 12 songke weavers.

'€œEarlier, we produced songke at our own homes, but the results were not nearly as good. In 2012, a team from the then Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy brought us together and helped us understand the advantages of traditional fabrics. So, we were keen to polish our skills,'€ said Rofina.

Rofina said over the past three years she had enjoyed a rise in profit from songke thanks to the rising popularity of the fabric in big cities. The proceeds, she said, were even enough to pay for her child'€™s university education.