Finding a picture of a man in front of a house is a real shoebox challenge, for me at least. But just before reaching the bottom of the box, I ran into a photo showing a childhood memory. When I went to primary school all pupils had their own garden. It was a plot of land measuring approx. 9 x 9 ft. where we grew flowers, potatoes, and vegetables and learned about biology. Very educational! But that was not the main reason why this garden complex was etched in my memory. That was the house that was built there. It was called the Minankabau house. As you can see it does not come close to the traditional Dutch stepped gables. In fact, the house originates in what before WWII was called the Dutch East Indies, today Indonesia. To find the true origin of the house, we have to go to the island of Sumatra. There the Minankabau people originate. Without trying to write an anthropological report, I want to highlight one aspect of the Minankabau society. Whether you like it or not, our culture is based on patriarchal structures. Not so the Minankabau. Land, property, and the family name pass down from mother to daughter. (Matters such as politics are left to men.) So it is not unlikely that the house in the photo below was sold by a Minankabau woman to a Dutch enterprise.
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The Minankabau house on the Mient in The Hague
during the winter of 1939/1940 |
The picture comes from an album owned by A.K.J. (Karel) Morren (1906-1988), the man my mother lived with from 1967 until he passed away. I have no idea who the person with the broom/snow plow is. He or she is standing amidst the school gardens I mentioned earlier. It needs a bit of imagination, but it can be said that he or she is standing in front of a house thus complying with this week's theme ;-)
The postcard below shows the same complex in 1935 but from the opposite direction. The Minankabau house is on the right.
To give you a better impression of these houses' beauty, below is a fine example situated in the village of Pandai Sikek, West Sumatra, Indonesia.
Please turn to the
Sepia Saturday site for more (unknown) men in front of mysterious houses.
What a beautiful style of building. And how smart, using gardens to teach children all kinds of good lessons. The Minankubau people were not the only people whose line of decent passed from mother to daughter. In early Scotland, the Picts' line of descent also passed from mother to daughter. Yay, and very smart. :)
ReplyDeleteThe esrly part of your post brought back memories of small garden plots that we could volunteer to tend in my High School. The rest of your post was fascinating on the background, and traditions relating the Minankabau house and your coloured image was stunning in illustrating the mixture of two cultures. Thank you for adding to my Knowledge.
ReplyDeleteWhat a fantastic architecture style! Besides my musical interests I am also a woodworker and sometime carpenter and I'm fascinated by how a house like that could be built so far away from its origins. The steep curved roofs seem to cope okay with snow which surely was not a consideration in Sumatra. I'd love to see the interior roof framing.
ReplyDeleteAnd you are quite right about the dog in my band postcards this weekend. I had not looked at the bandmaster's stripes and now think that his promotion came with a dog as a bonus.
How great to link to the Minankubau house and your youth garden next to it! It certainly is an Indonesian architecture, and I wonder how it weathered the snow of winters in The Netherlands. I'm so happy to learn of their matrilineal society. It would be interesting to know who built it (or perhaps transported it to that location.) Sounds like a story that I'd be anthropologically interested in!
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