I remembered when I was in campus couple years ago, I walked
and passed one of campus staff office. This staff displayed many LORO BLONYO
sculptures at her window. Seemingly, she has collected these items for long
time ago. I stared for a while to this collection. Each collection items was
made from different material and style. The facial expression of each couple
also varied one and another; smile, plain, silly and probably sad (I
interpreted). And that was my contact to this cultural object.
LORO BLONYO is a couple figure of man and woman in JAVANESE
tradition. Historically, this sculpture depicted DEWI SRI (Fertility Goddess)
and his partner. In Javanese LORO means two and BLONYO means make up (correct
me if I am wrong), But interestingly, while I did a little research about this
subject, I found that there is another interpretation of LORO BLONYO meaning,
it is ‘Inseparable Couple’. It is a symbol of perfect couple.
In the past, this couple figure could only be found in
noblemen's houses. In contrast, as I know, many king or noblemen in the past
has more than one wife. So it is still mystery why was the perfect couple
depicted with only one man and one woman? It may be controversial issue while I
don’t have many experiences for this matter, ha…
But just came back to my campus staff LORO BLONYO
collections. It is random LORO BLONYO figures, but in this randomness, I can
see very much variety of expression of those couple. Sometimes they are happy,
they are sad, they are plain, they are silly and fun. May be this LORO BLONYO
collection is picture of real life. They want to remind us that perfect couple
will go through hard and good time, but still, they are a couple, love each
other, and inseparable. Perhaps.
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