By Yvonne Tuah
The terendak, its symmetric cone, often bright with black and red, is almost impossible to miss here in Sarawak. Its silhouette is ever present on rooftops of government offices and buildings throughout the Melanau heartlands of Mukah, Dalat and Oya. It is hung on the walls alongside the emblems of Sarawak’s many other communities.
It crowns the sea of colour that surrounds the Melanau community’s annual Pesta Kaul, it graces festivities and traditional performances near and far, proof, if any needed, that this sun hat has become an enduring symbol of Sarawak’s culture.
But once, this hat was more than just a decorative item. It served a more utilitarian purpose and held a deeper meaning for the Melanau people.
Fashioned from what the jungle offered such as nipah or palm leaves (daun palas), rattan, and the bark of the rumbia tree, the terendak was a farmer’s and fisherman’s hat, built to withstand both driving rain and unforgiving sun.
Beneath its broad brim, Melanau fishermen spent long hours rowing their boats across the sea in search of the day’s catch. It sheltered boatbuilders who stood balanced on floating logs in Mukah’s dark, slow-moving rivers, patiently carving timber into vessels that would one day return to those same waters. In the swamps, it gave simple refuge to workers who felled towering rumbia palms for sago, the staple that sustained generations of Melanau families.
Even in death, an unwavering devotion
And to the mourning, the terendak took on a more sacred role to the Melanau community of old, whose beliefs embraced the existence of realms beyond the one we inhabit.
Larger than the everyday terendak, the terendak ‘ulid’ was woven specifically for Melanau women mourning the loss of a husband, a parent, or a child; worn as part of a practice called ‘mulid’, an old and exacting tradition of grief. Sometimes it was crowned with the ‘jengayak’, a special weaving shaped like a human figure, placed atop the hat as a token meant for the other realm.
Wider than the average terendak, the terendak ulid is steeped in superstition. It should only be worn once a mourner has committed herself to the Melanau tradition of mourning, becoming a mulid whereby she adheres to a strict set of rules to show her devotion to the dead.
“The terendak ulid is worn to show the love for those who has passed away,” explained Tommy Black Mark Lang, founder and sole curator of Sapan Puloh, a mini Melanau Museum in Kampung Tellian Tengah, Mukah where among the pieces on display is a full mulid outfit, complete with the terendak ulid.
He further explained that a woman committed to mulid had to wear the terendak ulid every time she left the house, and it should never fall from her head, lest she risk catastrophe, or ‘lupa’. Alongside the hat, she was required to wear the ‘bajao kurung mulid’ for a period of fifteen months as a testament to her devotion to the deceased.
Today, as most of the Melanau community have embraced religion, the practice of mulid, and the sight of a terendak ulid worn on a woman’s head, has all but disappeared. The terendak ulid now survives mainly in museums, historical records and family heirlooms, with few, if any, still practising the craft of making it for its original purpose.
By the coast, the terendak turns
Journey along Sarawak’s coast, and the terendak changes with the landscape.
Though its unmistakable conical silhouette remains, each Melanau settlement has shaped the hat into its own expression of identity.
Much like the Melanau dialect, which shifts slightly from area to area, each terendak carries its own distinctive markers, subtle differences known only to those who ask, or to the terendak’s artisans and collectors.
At Sapan Puloh, Tommy has spent years gathering these terendak from across the region, each hat distinct in origin, purpose and era. Among his collection is the ‘tapow apu’ (white terendak), a tough white terendak woven entirely from rattan and reinforced with ‘kapur sirih’ (betel nut paste), alongside the ‘tapow ukap’, made from the bark of the sago palm.
He also pointed out the subtle differences of each district’s terendak.
In the Igan and Oya areas, the terendak takes its most basic form, its clear symmetrical red and black pattern set against the palm leaves’ natural brown. In Matu and Daro, the terendak there, known as the ‘tapow belaten’ or ‘seraong’, is made mainly of rattan and bamboo, giving artisans freedom to design beyond the terendak’s well-known symmetrical conical pattern.
In Tellian, Mukah, the terendak ‘lawud’ is easy to spot by the extra rattan weaving worked into its brim, a technique few artisans outside the area have mastered.
And in Dalat, where the hat is known in the local dialect as “sera’o”, the terendak is made taller, its weavings finer and more intricate. Here, artisans work slender cuts of bamboo and dried palm leaves into elaborate symmetrical patterns that converge at the ‘belisah’, the top of the hat, bound in a knot from a technique has passed down through generations of weavers.
That knowledge lives on in the hands of young artisans like Fidelis Michael, who is still learning, and reshaping, what generations before him has left behind.
From a mother’s hands
Along the banks of the Oya river in Dalat, at Kampung Tanam Seberang, 40-year-old Fidelis is mastering the intricate weavings of the Dalat sera’o. His designs have already caught the attention of culture and craft enthusiasts far beyond Sarawak, drawing buyers from Japan and France who crossed oceans for his work, some of which echoes the colour and pattern of Italian stained glass. As a seafarer himself, Fidelis has carried the craft even further, introducing the Melanau terendak to people who might otherwise never have encountered it.
His designs lean contemporary, built to catch the eye of a more discerning modern audience. He works in richer colours and beads, with his more recent work pushing further into modern territory, experimenting with Swarovski crystals and, in one design, the Sarawak crest woven directly into the hat.
Yet for all the added colours and complexities made possible by wider access to materials, Fidelis never strays far from what makes the sera’o what it is. The essence remains in the weave itself, in patterns that is still rooted to the past.
As a Melanau, the craft was never distant from him. His mother, Julan Ajus, has been an artisan since she was a teenager, and growing up in the family’s kampung house in Sungai Tanam Seberang, the sight of her weaving was as everyday as watching her prepare breakfast – a comforting constant.
But his own passion for the craft was only ignited when the Covid-19 pandemic struck in 2020. Fidelis, who works as a pastry chef aboard an oil company vessel in the Caribbean, was due to return to duty when, the day before he was to report, the Movement Control Order came into effect. Confined to his home in Dalat, he began picking up the craft by watching his mother weave, in the quiet of the evenings, sitting on the veranda overlooking the river.
“That’s how it all started. I wasn’t the type who could just sit around doing nothing. I considered making food products, but selling them was difficult during the pandemic because deliveries were so challenging.
“So I turned to this instead. Before long, the District Office noticed what I was doing, and it piqued their interest,” he said.
Modernising wisdom of the ages
He began posting photos of his works on social media, and when he eventually returned to work, he kept advocating for the craft online. Interest grew, and soon requests came in to purchase the sera’o. As demand rose, and with the terendak entirely handmade, using traditional methods of drying and pressing that can take days to complete a single piece, Fidelis stepped in to help his mother keep pace, weaving even during his own quarantine at a hotel, with raw materials delivered straight to his room.
His mastery of the craft also traces back to a group of weavers, of which his mother is also part of, known as the ‘Tapow Ladies’ of Kampung Tanam – twelve Melanau craftswomen, masters of the art. It was within this group that Fidelis found his own footing, learning new techniques while sharing his own ideas for elevating the sera’o’s design.
Even now, though Fidelis weaves faster than his mother, now 68, he still turns to her for guidance, whether to refine a design or recall the correct name for a part of the hat, so that the knowledge behind it is not lost to time.
Young hopes for the future
Over the past few years, Fidelis has become an active advocate for the sera’o craft, and his hope is simple: that the younger generation will choose to carry it forward.
He hopes for greater support to draw more people into the craft and to help them turn it into a genuine source of income.
He also hopes, one day, for dedicated facilities where the terendak can be showcased and workshops held, open to artisans and curious newcomers alike.
A symbol of the Melanau
No matter how far it has travelled, or how far it has evolved from a simple sunhat meant only to shield its wearer from rain and sun, one thing has stayed constant: the terendak must be woven by hand. No machine can replicate it. It takes real skill to form a hat that truly carries the weight of Melanau identity, skill passed down, refined, and in Fidelis’s case, reimagined for a new generation, while at Sapan Puloh, Tommy works to preserve that skill seen in the pieces he collects.
More than that, the terendak has become a symbol of the Melanau community itself.
“It makes me proud because the terendak is iconic of Melanau identity. Wherever you go, if you see a terendak, you know Melanau people have left their mark there. That’s why it makes me proud to see how far the terendak has gone and how it has grown to become iconic to the Melanau community,” Fidelis said.
In a State home to dozens of ethnic groups, each carrying their own dress, dialect, and craft, the terendak has become something the Melanau can call their own. And there is something worth holding onto in the sight of Tommy tending his collection of terendak and tapow, or Fidelis and his mother, weaving side by side on the veranda in Sungai Tanam Seberang. Small as it may seem, it is how a people remain visible, one hat, one weave, at a time. – DayakDaily
