a further imitation of the Javanese batik available in the early 1900s, in 1926 two sons of Haji Che Su of Kelantan, Mohd Salleh and Mohd Yusoff, adopted a type of silk-screen method to produce inexpensive ‘batik Jawa’ sarongs featuring the large Pekalongan-style floral bouquets of Java’s north coast. Known as batik kotak (kotak means ‘box’ after the frame used to hold the muslin screen stretched across it), the process required several large screens the size of a sarong, one for each colour to be printed on the cotton fabric. Instead of applying a resist material such as wax or lacquer to the fabric itself, the waxed design was applied direct to the muslin screen in the required pattern and then placed over the cloth. Dye was poured into a frame and forced through with a roller-like implement onto the sheet of cotton fabric underneath. Where the screen was masked by the resist design, the dye was unable to penetrate and reach the fabric. The wooden frame was then lifted clear and the design repeated on a further section of the cloth. Although this type of printing was quick, the setting up of the screens and the drawing of the motifs was time-consuming, which may explain why the process was not widely adopted outside Haji Che Su’s family. The founding of a family business, SAMASA Batik, still in operation today by Haji Che Su’s descendants, signalled the start of batik making as a cottage industry in Kelantan.
The real breakthrough in the development of Malaysian batik came, however, in the 1930s with the widespread adoption in Kelantan and Terengganu of wax stamping utilizing metal blocks. This development was inextricably linked with local production of the batik sarong in imitation of imports from the north coast batik centres of Java, and is the subject of the next chapter.
A combination block-printed/hand-painted 1960s sarong from SAMASA, Kota Bharu, Kelantan, featuring the recurrent Pekalongan-style floral spray on the kepala (head) and badan (body) and an intricate background of small filler leaves.
A section of the badan of a skilfully block-stamped (batik cap) sarong from Terengganu, 1950s, decorated with floral motifs, among them orchid buds and blooms.
In the middle of the nineteenth century, the invention of the cap (pronounced ‘charp’) in Indonesia, a copper block that applies wax for an entire design on to a piece of cloth with a single imprint, revolutionized the batik industry which had hitherto been dominated by the labour-intensive stylus-like canting (tjanting in Indonesian, both pronounced ‘charnting’) for waxing cloth. Using a cap, a batik worker could wax twenty sarongs a day instead of spending a month or more hand-waxing a single sarong. This increase in the speed of production was deemed imperative in the mid-1850s, not only to fulfil the needs of a growing demand for batik locally and in markets outside Indonesia, such as Malaysia, but also to offset the flood of cheap printed European textiles that had begun to replace Indonesia’s handwoven products. It was feared that both Java’s batik industry and the wider country’s handloom traditions would be decimated. Although many purists disparaged the cap at the time for producing an inferior product—marks were left on the cloth where the stamped units overlapped at the edges—there is no question that it saved Indonesia’s batik industry from extinction and also allowed the technique to spread to other places. Cap textiles quickly outstripped their European printed counterparts in terms of quality, and because they were affordable were able to reach a much broader, albeit lower priced and less discerning market. Cap work could also be combined with canting work to produce yet another variation of wax-resist batik. Later, the cap technique was to extend beyond the sarong into stamped yardage (batik ela) for tailoring a broader range of apparel as well as items for home use.
A part from its significant effect on batik production and the commercialization of batik, the introduction of the cap signalled a change in demographics in the batik industry in Indonesia. While the application of wax on to cloth with a canting had been almost exclusively a task reserved for women, as it is still today in Indonesia (and Malaysia), in the many batik workshops and factories that were established along the north coast of Java, especially by entrepreneurs of Arabic and Chinese origin, men became increasingly involved in what was basically a semi-industrialized industry. Cap work was heavier and more physically demanding than canting work, thus opening up a role for men in the ‘production line’ as stamp makers, batik printers and dyers.
As noted in Chapter 1, Malay women in the peninsula—not forgetting the small communities of Straits Chinese women in Penang, Melaka and Singapore known as Nyonyas—adopted the habit of wearing batik sarongs long before the Malays in the east coast states of Kelantan and Terengganu began making them. It is believed that the use of metal stamps and wax was introduced to the Malay Peninsula as late as the 1930s by Javanese batik makers who came to seek employment in batik workshops and, in the process, impart their knowledge of batik making. Some were brought in specially to teach the art of batik cap at workshops in Kota Bharu and Kuala Terengganu, such as a batik maker by the name of Raden Mokhtar who was employed at the workshop of Haji Che Su bin Haji Ishak in Lorong Gajah Mati, Kota Bharu, Kelantan, in early 1931. There was no simultaneous introduction of the canting in the Malay Peninsula. As Sarah Arney points out in her pioneering work, Malaysian Batik: Creating New Traditions (1987), the Malays were not interested in learning the Indonesian canting or tulis technique. It was too labour-intensive and the sarongs produced too expensive. By using the cap technique, the Malay batik workers, predominantly men as in Indonesia, could produce sarongs in greater quantities and at prices that were within the reach of ordinary people. Although the stamps used were initially made of imported copper, as they were in Indonesia, when the price of copper rose, Malay stamp makers turned to recycling tin cans.
A section of the kepala and badan of a screen-printed cotton sarong from Terengganu, 1998. The opposing pucuk rebung triangles and floral borders on the kepala, combined with the patterning of flowers and foliage on the badan, were inspired by Pekalongan sarongs from the north coast of Java.
Materials and Methods
Producing good cap designs in batik is a lengthy process requiring specially made tools, careful planning of the design layout and expertise in stamping and dyeing. As Mohamed Najib Ahmad Dawa says in his introduction to En Bloc (2009), a catalogue of an exhibition of some 500 batik stamps or cap held at Malaysia’s National Art Gallery, ‘The stamping technique is actually a more deliberate process than the canting method.... It requires more tools and greater schematic planning in the image-making compared to the hand-drawn method.’ There are, however, limitations to the possible intricacy of cap design and the compositions are made rather rigid by the need for repetition. Another significant difference, Najib says, lies in the dyeing process. ‘The stamping technique requires a pre-planned scheme of colours, due to the process of dipping and dyeing in the bath. In the case of hand-drawn batik, the dyes are applied directly onto the surface and a myriad of colours can be applied by the stroke of the brush.’
It is perhaps to be expected that the somewhat coarse locally made tin stamps did not produce the fine, consistent lines typical of Indonesian batik cap; rather, as Arney points out, they resulted in a ‘fidgety’ look. Nevertheless, the earliest Malaysian batik cap fulfilled a local need for sarongs for everyday wear and some were even exported to Sarawak, Brunei, Singapore and Thailand. The block technique could also be used to produce stamped cloth in yardage, which became increasingly popular. Although batik production halted during the Japanese occupation of Malaya (1941–5) because of a lack of imported cotton from England and India, by the early 1950s production had resumed. Haji Ali’s factory in Terengganu was employing 200 workers and there were some 60 factories operating in Kota Bharu, Kelantan. Batik cap was on its way as a fully established handicraft in Malaysia, reaching its pinnacle in the 1970s.
A typical monotone block-printed sarong featuring repetitions
