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Kelabit Bead Cap — Cover

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.

Learn more about the Kelabit Bead Cap style

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

Background
Surface
Primary
Secondary
Accent
Text

Typography

Libre BaskervilleHeadings
IBM Plex MonoMono
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