Nama : Ni Nyoman Dita Ayu Purwani

Prodi : Pendidikan Seni Dan Budaya

Nim : 22031660011

Mata Kuliah : Bahasa Inggris

Batik as one of Indonesia's cultural heritage

Our Legacy
Batik is Indonesian’s national heritage. Other nations have cloths that look like
Batik. However, on October 2, 2009, UNESCO declared that batik originates in
Indonesia. UNESCO also proclaimed Indonesian batik a Masterpiece of Oral
and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. In brief, batik serves as our national
indentify, and it is, indeed, our legacy.
Batik, our beautiful Indonesian traitional cloth, has been part of Indonesian
life. Mothers use a batik sling when they carry their infant. Men and women
wear batik clothes at receptions, ceremonies, and other formal and social
events. They also use batik as casual wear at home and at places for
recreation. When a person dies, people cover him or her with batik with
funerary motifs. In addition, people use batik for home furnishing such as bed
sheets and covers, upholstery, and tablecloths. Bags, shoes, hats, and other
accessories also often use batik patterns. All in all, batik has a rich symbolism
related ti Indonesian society, nature, hostory, and culture.

What is batik ?
Batik is both an art and a craft, which is becoming ever more popular and
well known among contemporary artists all over the world, as a wonderfully
creative medium. The art of decorating cloth using wax and dye, has been
practised for centuries in many parts of the world including China, Japan,
India, South America and Europe.
In Java, an island in Indonesia, batik is part of an ancient tradition, and some
of the finest batik cloth in the world is still made there. The word batik
originates from the Javanese word “tik” which means to dot. Batik is both a
verb (to batik) and a noun (a batik – an object made by batiking!). Batik is
usually made on a fabric surface (such as cotton, silk, linen, rayon or hemp),
but batik techniques can also be used on paper, wood, leather and even a
ceramic surface.
 Hand drawn batik. Cirebon, North Java

To make a batik, selected areas of the design are blocked out by applying
hot wax over them, a dye is applied on top and the parts covered in wax
resist the dye and remain the original colour. A simple batik may be just one
layer of wax and one dye, but this process of waxing and dyeing can be
repeated many times if necessary to create more elaborate and colourful
designs. After the final dyeing the wax is removed (usually in hot water) and
the cloth is ready for wearing or displaying.
Elisa Quevedo
 Hetty van Boekhout

Contemporary batik, while owing much to the past, is markedly different

from the more traditional and formal styles of the past. The artist may use a
wide variety of techniques to apply the wax and the dyes: spraying, etching,
discharging, cracking, marbling, and use all sorts of different tools: copper
and wooden stamps, brushes, stencils. She may also use wax recipes with
different resist values: soya wax, beeswax, paraffin wax and work with
natural and synthetic dyes on all kinds of surfaces.
 Noel Dyrenforth

Batik is historically the most expressive and subtle of all the resist methods.
The ever-widening range of techniques available offers the artist the
opportunity to explore a unique process in a flexible and very exciting way.
The process of batik brings unexpected elements of surprise and delight
which is why so many artists find it so fascinating and even addictive!
The History of Batik
Evidence of early examples of batik have been found in the Far East, Middle
East, Central Asia and India from over 2,000 years ago. It is possible that
these areas developed independently, without the influence of trade or
cultural exchanges. However, it is more likely that the craft spread from Asia
to the islands of the Malay Archipelago and west to the Middle East along
the caravan trading route.

13th century stone carving on a temple in East Java showing batik patterns

In China, batik was practised as early as the Sui Dynasty (AD 581-618). Silk
batiks in the form of screens have also been discovered in Nara, Japan
ascribed to the Nara period (AD 710-794). These were probably made by
Chinese artists, and are decorated with trees, animals, flute players, hunting
scenes and stylised mountains.
 Wax resist textile from Niya, Xinjiang, China

No evidence of very old cotton batiks have been found but frescoes in the
Ajanta caves in Maharashtra State, India depict head wraps and garments
which could well have been batiks. Likewise temples such as at Borobodur
and Prambanan in Java contain figures dressed in garments patterned in a
manner suggestive of batik.

A mural from the Ajanta caves, India

In Egypt, linen grave cloths from the 4th century BC have been excavated
which show white patterns on an indigo blue background, possibly made by
scratching designs into wax. In Africa resist dyeing using cassava and rice
paste has existed for centuries in the Yoruba tribes of Southern Nigeria and
Senegal.
Indonesia, most particularly the island of Java, is where batik has reached its
peak. Here, Chinese, Arab, Indian and European traders bought and sold
textiles and batik is first specifically mentioned on a cargo bill in the mid-
17th century. From around 1835, textile manufacturers in Holland started
attempts to mechanise the production of batik using copper rollers and a
resin resist. When the Javanese proved unwilling to buy this cloth, it made
its way to West Africa, where it began a life and a tradition of its own, one
which continues to this day as “waxprint”.
In Java, textile merchants responded to the threat by finding a way to speed
up the time consuming method of hand drawing the design. Wooden block
printing was adapted to batik with the invention of copper stamps
(or tjaps as they are known) to apply hot wax.
Imitation batik cloth was produced in numerous European textile printing
companies throughout the 20th century, most notably in the UK and
Holland, and to this day is still made in just one - Vlisco in Helmond, the
Netherlands – a reminder of a colonial past.

Ragnhild d'Ailly, Art Deco silk batik shawl, 1928

In Europe, these exotic cloths sparked a wave of creativity. In the 1890s in

Amsterdam, a group of young artists introduced the batik technique to
interior decoration, furnishings and later to fashion. This proved very
successful, and from the the beginning of the 20th century, batik was
practised by thousands of European and American artists and craftspeople.
The peak of its popularity was between 1918 and 1925 when it was popular
in Holland, Germany, France, Poland and the UK.

German artist with a glass canting about 1910

The art of batik waned in the West until the 1960s when it was once more
taken up, explored, and adapted by artists, including Noel Dyrenforth in
London who was the founder of The Batik Guild. What started out in 1986
as a small group of Noel's students has become an international collection
of batik lovers, teachers and artists. In Asia too, artists began to see the
potential of their grandmother’s craft and now batik flourishes both as a
traditional and as an innovative, completely contemporary art form loved
and practised by batik artists all over the world.
Batik in Indonesia
There is nowhere in the world where the art of batik has been developed to
a higher standard than on the island of Java in Indonesia. All the raw
materials for the process are readily available - cotton and beeswax and
many plants from which the natural dyes were made.
We don’t know when batik was first made there, but the traditional skills
were particularly well developed over hundreds of years in Central Java
around the Kraton (or Court) cities of Yogyakarta and Solo under the
patronage of the Sultan and his family.
 Sultan of Jogyakarta wearing batik

Batik designs were imbued with meaning and powerful symbolism, and
some designs were restricted to certain people only – specifically The
Sultan himself, or his wider family, or the Court servants and retainers.
Making batik was seen as an important skill for a young woman of noble
birth. Before beginning a new cloth, she would spend a night in meditation
and prayer, and the cloths she made over many months of long and
painstaking work, would be revered and preserved as heirlooms for future
generations.

Dancer at the Jogyakarta Royal Palace

On the north coast of Java, in trading ports such as Pekalongan, designs

were freed of the conservatism of the Royal “Kraton” and were influenced
by the requirements of their customers. Settlers from China set up their
own batik workshops to sell to Chinese families both in Indonesia and in
China.
 Hand drawn batik. Cirebon, North Java

Workshops run by Indische (or Dutch-Indonesian) women became famous

for the beautiful fine cloths with European influenced designs, which they
produced for the many colonial families living in Indonesia by the 19th
century, and many beautiful batik cloths were sent back to Holland. Traders
from India and Arabia also had their own particular preferences in designs
and colours.
As well as Java, batik was, and still is produced on the neighbouring islands
of Sumatra and Madura with its own cultural history and characteristic
designs and dye colours. Balinese artists too have learnt batik from their
Javanese neighbours and workshops have now sprung up there to cater for
the tourism trade.
Today, batik is still a huge part of Javanese life – as a fine art, as a huge
industry employing millions, as a village craft and as a powerful link with the
past. It incorporates many modern techniques such as silk screen printing,
spray dyeing, block printing and bleach discharging. Batik cloths from Java
are exported all around Asia and the world.
 Batik by Tatang Wibowo, Javanese contemporary batik artist

In October 2009 Indonesian Batik was awarded a place on the UNESCO list
of Intangible Cultural Heritage; and its future and its place at the heart of
Javanese culture would seem to be assured.
The two main methods of applying wax are:
Batik Tulis – or hand drawn batik
The cloth is hung over a frame and the design is drawn on with a canting (or
tjanting), a small copper cupped spout with a bamboo or wooden handle.
The canting is dipped into a pot of hot wax and then allowed to flow
through the spout on to the fabric. To make a strong resist both sides of the
cloth are waxed. Batik tulis is significantly more time consuming and
therefore expensive than…
 Waxing with a canting

Cap (or tjap) Batik – hand stamped batik

The cloth is placed on a padded table and a copper stamp (cap or tjap) is
used to apply the wax. The cap is heated in a pan of hot wax and then
pressed on to the fabric. Obviously this is much faster than hand drawing
and can be used for repeat designs. Again both sides of the cloth are usually
waxed.
 Cap batik

Dyestuffs
Traditionally the dyes used were deep blues obtained from plant indigo
which grew profusely in Java and was cultivated as a cash crop, and the
yellows to deep browns called “soga” obtained from a variety of tree barks,
heartwood and roots. In the north, a brilliant red was also famously used,
obtained from “mengkudu” tree roots (morinda citrifolia).
Towards the beginning of the 20th century synthetic dyes were introduced
and enthusiastically taken up in the coastal regions where, to this day, batik
remains more colourful and varied. In the conservative Sultanates of Central
Java, the traditional blues and browns of natural plant dyes were still
exclusively used until well into the 1960s.
Nowadays synthetic “napthol” dyes are the most widely used for their vivid
colours and resistance to fading, although interestingly there is a movement
back to using natural dyes in Indonesia, just as there is in much of the textile
world.
Batik in China and South-east Asia
There is a long history of batik production in China, dating back to the sixth
century. Nowadays the tradition of batik is still practised by the minority
groups - the Miao, Bouyei and Gejia who live mainly in Yunnan and Guizhou
provinces in south western China. And as some of these people (particularly
the Miao) have been migrating out of China and into the neighbouring
countries of Vietnam, Thailand, and Laos, since the 18th and 19th centuries,
their traditional textiles including batik can also be found there. When they
live outside of China, the Miao people are known as the H'mong - they are
the same people.

Extremely fine Bouyei work, South-west China

From the late 1970's onward many H'mong families from Laos were
resettled in the West especially in the USA, after they sided with the
Americans and against the Pathet Lao in the Vietnam War. There are
H'mong communities nowadays mostly in California, Minnesota and
Wisconsin and some of them continue to batik!
All the minority people place great emphasis on their traditional dress which
can help outsiders distinguish them from each other, and their costumes
include elements of batik.

H'mong women wearing batiked and embroidered traditonal pleated skirts at New Year, Thailand

Hemp and cotton is waxed usually with beeswax and dyed with a strong
natural indigo to produce a very deep blue. Indigo dyeing is widespread
throughout the area and there is great expertise in producing the indigo
paste from the leaves, and dyeing the cloth. Girls traditionally start learning
to embroider, dye with indigo and to produce batik from the age of 6 and 7
years. However many of these textile skills are slowly dying out as printed
imitations of batik synthetic dyes, and machine embroidered cloths have
been introduced.
 Indigo-dyed batik cloths, Thailand

Waxes, ladaos and batiked cloth. H'mong, Thailand

The beeswax is usually heated in a little pot, resting in the hot embers of a
wood fire and the tools for applying wax are called “ladao” These are made
from 2 small triangular pieces of metal (originally many were made from old
copper pennies) and their apexes are bound to a bamboo holder with
copper wire. The ladao tool lends itself to drawing straight or slightly
curving lines. The cloth is laid flat on a board and the pen dipped into the
wax like a nib pen.

Waxing a banner in Wuji village. Guizhou, South-west China

 Waxing cotton with a ladao, Thailand

The designs are mostly geometric and traditional and redolent with
symbolism such as double spiral designs.  The most exquisite work is very
fine indeed with tiny fine blue lines on a white background.
Other tools used for patterning are finely split bamboo, and metal stamps. In
northern Thailand, for example, H'mong women generate an income from
their batik, and here metal stamps are used to stamp the design onto the
cloth in wax. It's then dyed in traditional indigo dye and made into table
cloths, cushion covers, and clothes.
Batik is used mainly on the cloth carriers made for babies to be carried in,
on jacket sleeves and most importantly for many of the Miao, as panels in
the women’s’ magnificent pleated skirts. These ‘migration’ skirts tell the
story of their ancestors’ journeys from the river valleys of Central China 
5,000 years ago. The patterns on the skirts represent the landscape they
passed through, and the rivers they crossed.
 A traditional Miao batiked skirt

The long clan banners of the Miao from Rongjiang, in southeastern Guizhou
tell their individual clan mythological stories, using flora and fauna motifs
which have a long history of representing their heroic ancestors.
In Thailand, in the northern town of Phrae, a distinct batik tradition has
developed in a people who came originally from Laos bringing their indigo
producing and dyeing skills with them. Traditionally they have always made
“mah hom” deep blue cloth made into tough and resilient garments for
northern rice farmers. In the past few years village families have begun to
produce batik, mostly for clothing, using woodblocks made from the teak
wood which is cultivated and carved in the area.
 Waxing with a teak block. Phrae, Thailand

That’s all the analysis I can give about “ BATIK” in Indonesia and the
conclusions that are quite summarized in it,thank you.