Indonesia are known for its diverse culture that spread throughout this vast archipelago nation. One such the famous Java’s cultural icon the Wayang Kulit or the shadow puppets.
The term ‘wayang’ is the Javanese word for shadow, or bayang in standard Indonesian while Kulit means skin, and refers to the leather construction of the puppets that are carefully chiseled with very fine tools and supported with carefully shaped buffalo horn handles and control rods.
These puppets come in all shapes and sizes from the brutish forms of the giants, raksasa, to the smaller fine limbed figures representing highly cultured kings and nobles. In fact every part of a puppet’s design has symbolic significance.
Different shaped eyes and noses denote such qualities as nobility, patience, crudeness, steadfastness, strength, loyalty, clownishness or wisdom. There are about 25 varieties of headdress to represent priests, princes, fighters, queens deities, kings or gods.
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