About Kelabit Bead Cap
The peta is a stiff beaded cap from the Kelabit Highlands of Sarawak. Its front field is packed with ba'o rawir — 15–25 mm burnt-orange glass tubes laid in radial rows — edged with yellow alai ma'un peanut beads and flanked by counted stripe panels in turquoise, brick red, white and black.
The glass is antique trade stock, priced by age and provenance rather than looks. Thirty yellow peanut beads once equalled a buffalo; an antique peta still reaches RM30,000. This system treats every bead the way its owners do: as a count, a type name and a value, never as ornament.
- Origin
- Kelabit Highlands, Bario, northern Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo
- Era
- pre-1900 antique trade glass; peta strung and re-strung from the 19th century to the present
- Key figures
- Tom Harrisson · Barbara Harrisson · Heidi Munan
- Movements
- Borneo trade-bead exchange · Kelabit adat rank and bride-wealth · Sarawak Museum ethnographic documentation
Kelabit Bead Cap design spec
Colors
Typography
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