Sacred Barong

The Story

In Balinese tradition the Barong is the benevolent spirit who stands against destructive forces: a lion-like guardian whose mask is held sacred in its own right, kept in the village temple and brought out to be danced rather than merely displayed. Sacred Barong takes that face and softens it almost past recognition. Everything is present, the wide yellow eyes, the flared snout, the gold fangs bared over a row of blunt teeth, the leaf-green beard, the crowned brow with its orange sun. But it is rendered in lilac, rose and cornflower rather than the usual reds and blacks, flanked by curling forms that read as manes, ears and wings at once. The result is a protector who greets rather than repels: he still holds the threshold, he simply does so in a register you can live with.

The entire surface is worked in beadwork, with no unbeaded ground anywhere in the composition. Panels of printed cotton are appliquéd into shape and then covered in seed beads, pearls and bugle beads laid in contour lines that follow every curve, so the pattern reads as topography under raking light. Colour is handled in strict families: yellow against lilac, coral against sage, gold against magenta. That is what keeps a piece this dense from collapsing into noise. The outer edge is shaped rather than rectangular, cut to the silhouette of the mask itself.

Sacred Barong is part of KURU's Sacred Threads collection, created under the artistic direction of Shantnu Sihag, trained at Istituto Marangoni and Rubelli Venice. Each artwork is entirely hand-embroidered, and the intricacy of materials and technique means no two pieces can ever be truly identical. Every artwork carries its own character, impossible to replicate exactly by hand, and is accompanied by a signed Certificate of Authenticity.