Pinisi: The Art of West-Austronesian Shipbuilding
‘Pinisi’, the popular appellation for the famed ‘Sulawesi schooner’, since about three decades became the very tag for Indonesia’s heritage of seafaring. However, it is not the rather tangible pinisi, but the sophisticated boatbuilding traditions of the Konjo shipwrights of the island of Sulawesi, the creators of these vessels, that in 2017 were inscribed in the list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Historically such ships were built in the villages of Lemo-Lemo, Ara and Bira; today, nearby Tana Beru, our World’s largest cluster of wooden shipyards, is the centre of the industry.