The New Batik

INTRINSICALLY INDONESIAN,YET VIEWED BY SOME AS A PRODUCT OF THE PAST,
BATIK IS BEING TARGETED TO CAPTURE A NEW GENERATION.

Rack of batik garments rustle under the soft lights of the 6000 square meter alun-alun emporium in Jakarta’s plush Grand Indonesia mall. Well heeled shoopers with nannies in tow survey the floor before heading downstairs for a latte. The crowd is largely local, rich and appreciative.
Batik is deeply entrenched in the Indonesian psyche. Despite production by other countries,Indonesian continue to think of batik as uniquely Indonesian. Many government organizations and some private companies also requery employees to wear batik once a week.
Traditionally, batik refers to fabric decorated painstakingly by hand using not wax and then dyed to create a pattern in reverse. Village developed patterns and colors so dictintive that a connoisseur could tell from sight alone the specific source of certain motifs. Central Java is particurlary well known for the quality of its batik. Cities like Pekalongan, Solo(previously Surakarta), Cirebon and Jogjakarta vie for the tittle kota Batik, or Batik City.
At the high end,crafting quality batik takes many hours, Batik tulis,literally ‘handwritten’ batik,involves hundreds of designs drawn painstakingly on the cloth by hand using hot wax applied with a copper stylus called a canting. The cloth is then dipped in dye to create a reverse pattern and the wax scraped off. Depending on the complexity of design,this may be repeated more than 20 times, with a day between dyeing to dry. “it’s like a painting. The same artist asked to paint again-it can’t be the same.
A cheaper alternative is batik cap, where designs are specturn on manually. These days, machines print simplified batik motifs directly onto cloth(usually polyester or rayon) fo a mass produced version,reffered to as printed batik. The price range is while its handmade tulis counterpart in silk might retail for a few hundred dollars.