Decorated House

Palawa Village, Tana Toraja

This house is a great summary of Torajan decoration, from the boat-roof of the house down to its double-rooster pediment and the several curlicue-painted layers below. Buffalo heads make their appearance in rows three and five (counting down from the triangular pediment with the roosters), and even a fragment of the double-serpent rainbow appears on the left side of the photo. A Torajan cross-piece, having nothing at all to do with Christianity, fronts the entire structure. Its short arm is decorated with diamond shapes, and its long vertical post sports painted curlicues. At the bottom of the vertical post in this photo is a set of painted upright triangles, a motif that goes all the way back to China in the Warring States Period, where similar bronze plates once decorated the base of a column.