Indonesian Batik – A Cultural Wonder from a Wonderful Country

 Batik is one of the most known cultural phenomena from Indonesia, aside from the traditional music and dances. Batik was inscribed in 2009 on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, effectively bumping Indonesia’s cultural status on the world. It attracts many tourists from all over the world, to buy the finished batik products and even to watch the processes involved in the batik culture.

Visiting a batik store is a wonderful experience in and of itself. The clothes have many colours and patterns, not to mention the actual smell of batik. Locally, batik is worn everywhere, from daily clothes to formal occasions. Batik is now used to represent Indonesia during international affairs as well.

Applying batik patterns to fabric is not a simple process. To apply the batik patterns, natural materials like cotton or silk are used for the cloth, because they can absorb the wax applied in the dye resisting process. The fabrics themselves must have a high thread count to maintain the qualities of batik. The clothes are expensive but are worth their prices.

Before applying wax, the cloth used for batik is washed and boiled many times to remove any traces of foreign substances. In the old days, people pounded the cloth with a wooden mallet or ironed it repeatedly to make it smooth and supple. These days, with the finer machine-made cotton available, the exhausting process can be skipped entirely.

When the cloth is ready, the design is drawn out to the cloth. The outline of the pattern is blocked out onto the cloth, traditionally with charcoal or graphite. The pattern can also be traced by laying the cloth on a glass table lit from below which casts a shadow of the pattern. The shadow can then be traced with a pencil.

Afterwards, the cloth is ready to be waxed. The artisans apply the wax to the areas that they want to remain the same colour, using a tool called canting. They use the wax to retrace the pattern from the previous process. The artisans mustn’t spill wax onto the cloth, because the spilt wax is very hard to clean. The more experienced artisans usually deal with the more intricate patterns, while the less experienced ones usually deal with the filling of larger areas.

After the initial waxed has been applied, the fabric is immersed in the dye bath of the first colour. The longer it is left in the bath, the darker it becomes. The fabric is put in a cold water bath to harden the wax afterwards. If the artisans want to dye the fabric with different colours, the fabric would be immersed with more dye baths. The number of colours in the batik represents how many times it was immersed in the dye bath. Between each dye bath, different layers of wax have to be applied and removed to colour different parts of the cloth.

Currently, the processes used to create batik are much more advanced. They revolutionized the steps in making batik so that the clothes are more easily made and have more high-quality results. Batik clothing is, even so, well-known that people from all around the world want to buy it by entering the online world.

Nowadays, you can buy batik without having to visit a batik store. Many people sell batik online, with various and competitive prices and high quality. You can wear the clothing to various kinds of events to try a more traditional, albeit not outdated, dressing style. This may be a good time to try one of the most unique cultural products in the world!

Buy 3 Pcs of Batik Tjap / Stamp Tablecloth – Original of Solo Indonesia