of the anticolonial struggle, which closed most batik factories and killed or exiled many of Java's batik entrepreneurs, their talents lost forever. In light of these travails, it was appropriate that when Indonesia achieved independence after the war, batik became the symbol of a unified nation.
A wealthy nineteenth-century Chinese is borne by two Javanese in a hammock with a bamboo roof.
This imposing house belonged to the mayor of the Chinese community in Batavia in the last half of the nineteenth century.
A session of the colonial court in either Kudus or Japara after an uprising of the poor protesting famine. The Dutch resident acted as judicial chief, aided by representatives of the Chinese and Islamic communities as well as the local chief.
LIFE IN 19TH CENTURY JAVA
Raden Saleh, photographed in a costume he designed, was a nineteenth-century Javanese painter who had visited the courts of Europe.
Raden Aju, wife of the regent of Kudus, with retainers.
The Batik Process
To appreciate batik fully, one must understand the extreme intricacy of the process and the great patience, care, and skill that it demands.
In Java, the long and laborious batik process begins at home or in factories that evoke William Blake's "dark Satanic mills" of nineteenth-century England. Since electricity is precious, workshops tend to be dim and dark. Often batikers must work by the natural light that somehow sneaks through the cracks and crevices of a workshop's roof.
With the unrelenting Javanese humidity and the unremittent vapors of molten wax, air hangs heavy in these factories, whose dirt floors are often muddied by rain. Women sit barefoot on mats or low stools, huddling in small circles around pans of heated wax, sharing the contents. Six days a week, they work from dawn to midafternoon for the equivalent of eighty cents to one dollar and fifty cents a day, about what it costs to feed a family. They range in age from ten to seventy, and they are considered no more than common laborers. From such sweatshop conditions come some of the most splendid textiles in the world.
In every true batik, wax is painstakingly applied to the cloth to resist successive dyes so that wherever the cloth is waxed, dyes cannot penetrate. For example, if the desired design is a red flower on a blue background, wax is first applied to the area that will become the flower. The white cloth is then immersed in blue dye and dried. After drying, the wax which covered the flower pattern is scraped from the cloth. Because the wax resisted the blue dye, there is now a white flower on a blue background. To make the flower red, the blue background is then covered with wax and the entire cloth is immersed in red dye. When the wax is scraped from the cloth for a second time, a red flower emerges on a blue background.
This process is repeated over and over again as more colors are used. The finest batik is reversible. Motifs are drawn, waxed, and dyed, first on one, then the other side of the fabric. Since the greatest Javanese batik is multicolored, it is not surprising that designers, waxers, dyers, and finishers take twelve months or more to complete a single piece of a yard or two.
Both silk and cotton are used for batik, and in certain areas, such as Juana on Java's north coast, silk is particularly popular. Unlike cotton, silk requires little preparation; its fibers are quite receptive to wax and dye without the elaborate series of treatments needed by cottons. Nevertheless, among Javanese batik makers the overwhelming preference is for cotton.
Children drawing batik designs on paper.
A typical tulis batik workshop, Several women share a pan of heated wax while each works on her own piece.
Centuries ago, cotton resembling coarse homespun was grown, spun, and woven in Java. That was serviceable for simple batik work. But to achieve sharp, and intricate details of certain motifs, a finer cotton was necessary—and the Dutch were happy to oblige. About 1824, they introduced a fine, white, machine-woven cotton, and for more than a hundred years Java was dependent on this for its better batik. Sen was the name of one Dutch manufacturing company that exported a cloth that came to be known as Tjap (Cap) Sen, synonymous with finest quality. Javanese factories now produce machine-loomed cotton, but it is not as fine as the earlier Dutch material.
Before cotton is batiked, it must be prepared to receive wax and dyes. The cloth is first measured, torn into appropriate lengths, and hemmed at the ends to prevent fraying. Sometimes it is boiled to remove sizing or stiffness in the fibers. After boiling, the cloth is treated with oil and lye to give it a base color and to prepare the fibers to receive the dyes. The cotton is rinsed in yet another bath and while still wet, it is folded in approximately twelve-inch widths along its warp. Placed on a wooden baseboard, the cloth is then beaten with a mallet, to soften the fibers and enable the material to absorb wax.
After the baths and the beating, a design is applied by pencil to the prepared fabric. Some workers are
