This finely woven hexagonal box made of raspberry coloured pandanus leaves, feature the almost extinct art of 'mad weave' or 'anyam gila' basketry. The patterns on these boxes appear in groups of uniform rhomboids, which combine to give the geometric illusion of hexagons. Against this background are intricate curl work plaited to form raised ornamentations. This lidded box probably belongs to a series of boxes which stacked up to form a pyramid.Made before the Second World War by women basket weavers, this type of complicated basketry was woven or plaited without a framework. The method was employed in various areas in the Malay peninsula and the Indonesian archipelago. In Singapore prisons, female inmates were made to learn the mad weave technique as a form of punishment.
