JAVANESE BATIK : A HISTORY OF WAX-PRINT TEXTILES
While traveling in Indonesia, I learnt about the creative process and visual language that is Javanese Batik. I came to Indonesia with a curiosity about this art form for its use of symbolic motifs, line, and color, which keep histories and spin a visual language for each coming generation of design-based storytellers. In search of context I visited Central Java where I toured an expansive, very old, private collections museum called the House of Danar Hadi Batik Museum, and had the honor of meeting a master of Batik as she practiced the technique. I also explored as many boutiques and shops as I could to see how the Batik motifs are being worn and sold by my generation in comparison to older generations. I will be able to further explore textile designs as a method of visual storytelling and contrast uses of color, line and scale in each place I learn from.
TRADITIONAL JAVANESE BATIK
Batik, from the Javanese words bat (meaning to write or to draw), and tik or titik (dots), refers to the technical and artistic tradition of wax-resist dyeing, and the textile created using this technique. Batik in Central Java was developed with three colors: blue, brown and white, produced in natural dyes and used on cotton fabric called morri. Contemporary textiles also use materials such as silk or polyester. The wax is painted on with a tool called a canting, which is traditionally made of a copper wax container to melt wax over a small stove, with small pipe spouts and a bamboo handle (canting tools can be found with one to nine spouts add parallel lines). The waxed fabric is dipped in a dye bath to add color, and the areas painted with wax resist the dye. The fabric is then washed with boiling water to melt and remove the wax. The wax itself is called malang, which blocks the color from dying the fabric. So in Batik, whatever you paint with wax remains white. The waxes were mixed using resins such as “matacuchin”(resin of a “damar tree”), resin of a pine tree, buffalo or cow fat, paraffin, beeswax, and an artificial microwax. Each wax has a different thickness and melting point. The thickest is called “tembocan” is used in the first waxing stage to withstand the multiple boiling stages it would endure from start to finish.
PROCESS AND MATERIALS
The first step of Batik is to prepare the fabrics using pencils to sketch the design. The next steps are called Klowangan, where hot wax covers everything that will be dyed in brown, and Tenbokan where the white background is waxed. Copper stamps came into use to speed up the Klowangan stage in the mid 19th century when the batik industry in Java faced intense competition with European printed cottons. They are covered securely before the fabric is dipped in blue made from indigo leaved during the next stage. Natural dyes have light pigment, so to attain a deep indigo blue a fabric would be dyed 30 to 40 times, while something close to black would result from 100 dips. Between each dipping the fabric must be fully dried out of sunlight to keep the colors from distorting. Next, the delicate details of Klowangan wax are scrapped off with a small coin to later be dyed brown. Afterwards, hot wax is applied to cover the blue areas in the stage called Biron. Then, the fabric will be dyed brown during Soga. The brown dye is traditionally made using barks from three native Indonesian trees combined. Finally the fabric is boiled in hot water to remove all remeainigng wax layers, A single fabric of 2.5x1.2 meters made in the traditional technical process could take between three to five months on average to complete, with more extravagant pieces taking even four to ten years. A simple textile made of three color layers would take about four months and require eight steps of waxing, dyeing, boiling and drying. Some waxing details require sections of wax to be meticulously scraped off in sections to add color layers. The more colors you add, the more scraping and applying of waxes is needed. The dipping order typically starts from the darkest color and moves on through the lightest. The introduction of chemical substances and artificial dyes in the early 1900s introduced colors like bright yellow, pink, green, red and very bright blue.
POPULAR MOTIFS:
HISTORY OF CENTRAL JAVANESE BATIK
The histories of Javanese people are woven into the designs of their textiles. The creation of varying motifs, colors, materials and styling all testify of the incredible creativity and national significance of Batik to Indonesian culture, economy, history and contemporary fashion, while also holding record of Indonesia’s very multicultural influences on Batik. For example, the favoring of earthy tones were influenced by Hinduism, the mandate of Islam to not depict whole living creates led to surrealist motifs from the Arabization of the main island, Java; the Dutch Colonial Occupation is marked in fashion history by the introduction of lace and beading in especially women’s tops, and dutch motifs in Batik; the colonization of Java by the Portuguese, Germans and British impacted the content and style of motifs due to foreign merchants from Europe who seized control of the design process; and rises of Chinese merchants increased motifs with fish, cherry blossoms, lotus flowers, and colors such as bright pink and red.
Between 1613 and 1645, the Sultanate of Mataram in Central Java was ruled by its third Sultan, Agung Adi Prabu Anyakrakusuma, a skilled soldier and conquerer whose name translates to "Great Sultan" or "Majestic Sultan". Following his rule, Mataram was weakened from within and the colonial Dutch Indian Company advantaged this to further weaken the kingdom by splitting it in two. This split was enforced through the Treaty of Giyanti on the 13th of February 1755, creating Kesultanan Yogyakarta and Surakarta Sunanate, which is also called Solo. To distinguish the two new kingdoms, differences in Batik colors and styling were implemented.
There were three main differences between the two kingdoms: shades of white, the direction of their parang pattern, and the folding of their jarik (a piece of long cloth tied around the waist and folded at the front).
Surakarta used a chemical in their dyeing process that tinted their ivory cloth cream during the waxing and dyeing process, their parang moved from right to left, and their jarik were styled with the bordering hem tucked under the folds of the jarik. In contrast, citizens of Yogyakarta had batik with ivory, their parang moved from left to right, and their jarik edges were folded over the front of the jarik, revealing a white line down the front of the garment.
The fabrics pictured above include parang and buketan (Dutch bouquets), which were introduced to merchant batik textiles during the Dutch Occupation period from 1840 to 1910. Dutch merchants began designing motifs and color pallets for native Indonesian textile designers to make in Indonesia. The knowledge of creating batik textiles remained guarded generationally amongst native Indonesians, passed down through intense and long learning processes which often began in childhood, unto mastery. Learning batik often involved even fasting and living in remote areas of the island to focus on the spiritual and practical development of their inherited practice. Motifs like the bouquet, European fairytales, horseshoes, poker cards, and troupes, were designed by Dutch women who did not adhere to regional rules of the Indonesian kingdoms, but rather used bright colors and symmetry to construct Dutch colonial occupation as aesthetically beautiful and culturally beneficial. One Dutch textile I saw in the private museum, titled “Batik Diponigoro, the Diponigoro War”, through the sense of the Dutch. The Java War (Javanese: ꦥꦼꦫꦁꦗꦮ) or Diponegoro War (ꦥꦼꦫꦁꦢꦶꦥꦤꦼꦒꦫ) was fought in central Java from 1825 to 1830, between the colonial Dutch Empire and native Javanese resistance. The Batik politely depicts Dutch troupes on horseback in neat, horizontal rows. Each horse and soldier is decorated like a carousal at a fair to evoke youthfulness and emanate 20th century Dutch art styles. The figures were painted in bright blue against a white fabric, two of three colors in the Dutch flag. The flag’s third color, red, is excluded from this textile to negate any reference to the violence of colonial genocide enacted by Dutch troupes in Indonesia, their blood shed. The childlike art style, the benevolent blue, the exclusion of red and Indonesian people, and the neat symmetry of the troupes fabricates the Dutch colonial occupation as an organized and benevolent procession.
While touring the Danar Hadi Batik Museum I was shown an early example of sustainable fashion resulting from World War II when cotton fabric imports from India were cut off to Indonesia. With a limited supply available, Chinese merchants designed a jarik called Pagi Sorre, meaining literally “morning, evening”. This jarik is made of two different motifs divided by a vertical or diagonal line, sometimes decorated with blossoms or Parang pattern. Two skirts in one fabric, this style is an exemplary sustainable fashion piece that is well loved still.
Batik from Java was taught to SubSaharan African textile designers during the 15th century, when Dutch Colonial merchants relied on the innovation and creativity of people from Asia and Africa to accumulate their imperial wealth, extorting the people and material wealth of these continents through economic and militant oppression. The specified development of this wax-print textile in SubSaharan Africa is most known as Ankara, or Kitenge. The more I learned about Javanese batik, the more I saw this medium as a wellspring of innovation and knowledge where creative design, chemistry, history, and fashion as storytelling all intersect. I was honored to learn from the historians and Batik masters of the House of Danar Hadi in Solo, Java, and am absolutely looking forward to continuing this exploration of textiles in the future.
