I can’t hide it anymore. I’m in deep with the wrong threads. Despite my sartorial upbringing, I always thought, “it will never happen to me.” I'm a comfort above style kind of person, not on principle but because I'm completely and hopelessly fashion-blind. A model could be wearing the most expensive magical clothing made of diamonds and rainbows and my first thought would be, "is that comfortable?" I think this is something that has slowly driven my mom, a brilliantly-gifted costumer and regular connoisseur of all things clothing-related, to the brink of her sanity. However, I am here today to report that apparently nurturing does win out over nature.
It all began quite recently, when my laptop was in the shop in Jakarta for a few weeks in September and I was looking for another hobby besides reading to fill that 3-5 pm time slot when all the students had cleared out and I wasn't ready to go home and play with my younger siblings just yet. I didn’t call it ‘retail therapy’ at first, because this is a term my mother has often used and it has much deeper connotations for her than for most people.
The backstory: A man owns a batik shop just around the corner from my school. My counter-part took me there before the fated laptop-less period and I found he had a lot of pretty and cheap batik (even on a volunteer's budget). From this rather innocent beginning things went downhill very quickly.
In September I went in there again and this time the bright colors and wild designs whispered to me in a rustling, course language of their own. Forty-five minutes later I came out with a new batik and a feeling of reverential awe for the gorgeous work of art in my hands. Things only got worse from there. After that, I found myself scanning a crowd for interesting batik. This was the first thing I noticed about someone who was wearing batik: what were the distinctive designs and what new mixtures of colors were there? I loved the bright colors and varying degrees of detail, from the cartoony-style of Cirebon batik to minute detailed lines of Sukabumi batik. I loved that I finally found myself in a place where matching purple and orange and gold and yellow was not frowned upon. The clouds of doubt parted and a resplendent new world opened up before me.
Our dress code for teachers is batik, so at first it was excusable for me to discuss my interest in batik with other teachers. They, sweet souls, offered to show me some other places to find batik. I started doing some online research into the history and different styles of batik.
Everyone wears batik - even the president! Uniforms for everyone from bus drivers to teachers are usually batik.
Saturday:
I was feeling a little restless in my teaching routine since about two weeks ago so I jumped at the first opportunity to go to Jakarta with the biology teacher at my school. I told her I had a yen for the Textile Museum and she kindly offered to accompany me on this morning jalan-jalan before meeting her daughter in the afternoon. We took the train at 6 am and arrived in the Big Durian* (not it’s real name….at least I don’t think it is) roughly two hours later. You can actually take the train right to Tanah Abang, a sub district in Jakarta which has the largest textile market in Southeast Asia, and walk from there to the Textile Museum. The biology teacher, Bu Dila, asked around and we found the museum very easily.
Things weren’t really popping yet so we walked around outside and through several workshop stations set up... I'll have to come back when they have a workshop going on.
You have to heat the wax to put it on the cloth (for your design) and again to take it off later.
I guess this is around step 5 or 6, after several dye baths.
This is a different cloth-making process called Tenun Ikat Flores. The tradition originates from the island Flores and symbolizes a woman's maturity. It takes many months to make and each piece is supposed to tell a story of that woman's life, love, relationship with God and their family and/or how they've upheld their dignity....much more history behind this that I'll have to read up on.
Process for making batik (bahasa Indonesia above, bahasa Jawa below): 1. Make the design 2-4. Apply the 1st, 2nd and 3rd wax (over the pencil design. In between the different wax applications you dip the cloth in the dye bath and apply more wax depending on the level of detail you want 5. Color and boil (after a couple of wax applications all the wax that has been applied thus far is removed. This is done by heating the wax and scraping it off and also by applying hot water and sponging off the remaining wax.) There are other steps but I guess this is the basic overview. You basically keep adding wax to areas you want to remain white and keep submerging the cloth in different colored dye baths until you've got the design and coloring you want.
You can still see the pencil lines on this one.
The Obamas follow us Americans everywhere here.
It all began quite recently, when my laptop was in the shop in Jakarta for a few weeks in September and I was looking for another hobby besides reading to fill that 3-5 pm time slot when all the students had cleared out and I wasn't ready to go home and play with my younger siblings just yet. I didn’t call it ‘retail therapy’ at first, because this is a term my mother has often used and it has much deeper connotations for her than for most people.
The backstory: A man owns a batik shop just around the corner from my school. My counter-part took me there before the fated laptop-less period and I found he had a lot of pretty and cheap batik (even on a volunteer's budget). From this rather innocent beginning things went downhill very quickly.
In September I went in there again and this time the bright colors and wild designs whispered to me in a rustling, course language of their own. Forty-five minutes later I came out with a new batik and a feeling of reverential awe for the gorgeous work of art in my hands. Things only got worse from there. After that, I found myself scanning a crowd for interesting batik. This was the first thing I noticed about someone who was wearing batik: what were the distinctive designs and what new mixtures of colors were there? I loved the bright colors and varying degrees of detail, from the cartoony-style of Cirebon batik to minute detailed lines of Sukabumi batik. I loved that I finally found myself in a place where matching purple and orange and gold and yellow was not frowned upon. The clouds of doubt parted and a resplendent new world opened up before me.
Our dress code for teachers is batik, so at first it was excusable for me to discuss my interest in batik with other teachers. They, sweet souls, offered to show me some other places to find batik. I started doing some online research into the history and different styles of batik.
Everyone wears batik - even the president! Uniforms for everyone from bus drivers to teachers are usually batik.
Saturday:
I was feeling a little restless in my teaching routine since about two weeks ago so I jumped at the first opportunity to go to Jakarta with the biology teacher at my school. I told her I had a yen for the Textile Museum and she kindly offered to accompany me on this morning jalan-jalan before meeting her daughter in the afternoon. We took the train at 6 am and arrived in the Big Durian* (not it’s real name….at least I don’t think it is) roughly two hours later. You can actually take the train right to Tanah Abang, a sub district in Jakarta which has the largest textile market in Southeast Asia, and walk from there to the Textile Museum. The biology teacher, Bu Dila, asked around and we found the museum very easily.
Things weren’t really popping yet so we walked around outside and through several workshop stations set up... I'll have to come back when they have a workshop going on.
You have to heat the wax to put it on the cloth (for your design) and again to take it off later.
I guess this is around step 5 or 6, after several dye baths.
This is a different cloth-making process called Tenun Ikat Flores. The tradition originates from the island Flores and symbolizes a woman's maturity. It takes many months to make and each piece is supposed to tell a story of that woman's life, love, relationship with God and their family and/or how they've upheld their dignity....much more history behind this that I'll have to read up on.
Process for making batik (bahasa Indonesia above, bahasa Jawa below): 1. Make the design 2-4. Apply the 1st, 2nd and 3rd wax (over the pencil design. In between the different wax applications you dip the cloth in the dye bath and apply more wax depending on the level of detail you want 5. Color and boil (after a couple of wax applications all the wax that has been applied thus far is removed. This is done by heating the wax and scraping it off and also by applying hot water and sponging off the remaining wax.) There are other steps but I guess this is the basic overview. You basically keep adding wax to areas you want to remain white and keep submerging the cloth in different colored dye baths until you've got the design and coloring you want.
You can still see the pencil lines on this one.
The Obamas follow us Americans everywhere here.
The only crowd we had to fight with was a bunch of curious children who paid to come in while we were there looking around. They didn't look at the textiles that much and took some pictures for us when Bu Dila asked them.
This building has been used as a private residence for a Frenchman, as headquarters of Barisan Keamanan Rakyat ("Front of People's Safety") during the struggle for independence period and later as a retirement home. It was built in the early 1800s.
A sign at the front of the museum said “No Pictures” but, as with our previous experience at the National Museum where selfies specifically were "not allowed", this rule was not enforced so everyone took them anyway. Both of these signs were a complete waste of ink and placard if you ask me.
I, however, was worried that this time the rule might be enforced so I ran around madly snapping photographs for the first five minutes until I realized that no one cared. At this point my excitement had reached critical levels.
Batik Pesisir from Cianjur.
We took another turn around the room, at a slower pace this time, and Bu Dila explained to me the two different names for Batik from different regions in West Java. There is Batik Pedalaman and Batik Pesisir. All of the batik in the textile museum was Batik Pesisir. This is only a general regional distinction to my knowledge. I don't yet know about East Java distinctions. Batik Pesasir comes from Sukabumi (which was very detailed), Garut (a mix of styles), Cirebon (cartoon-ish, generally-speaking), Tasikmalaya (where the above pictured sunflower batik is from) and Cianjur (which looked more detailed to me than, say, Cirebon batik, but the lines were still not crisp). Bu Dila told me that Batik Pedalaman comes from Solo and Jogja, in Central Java.
There is a wider distinction between all batik, however, and this is batik tulis (literally "written batik") and batik cetak ("printed batik"). Batik tulis is the handmade wax dye-resistant stuff that's more expensive. Batik cetak is made with the wood/metal stencils above. Potentially other methods of printing as well. Have not read that far yet.
After the museum we set out for the Tanah Abang market.
I believe I mentioned before that the interwebs have claimed that Tanah Abang is the largest textile market in Southeast Asia. Well, large doesn't really begin to cover it. Since it's in the capital city, the market goes up and not out. The market only covers about a block but then goes up. And up. And up. Imagine floor upon floor (12 to be exact) of only clothing stores with crowds of people clogging up the thin spaces between shops and people standing out in front of their tiny shops saying "boleh masuk, boleh masuk" (meaning "you may enter" - not exactly the aggressive hawkers I'm used to...) A food court was squished in on the 11th floor and there we ate a brunch of noodles, vegetables and gross-looking fish for Bu Dila (she even said it was gross.) Baby roaches crawled around our feet and on the table.
The trip home was eventful in that I took the train to a stop that did not have a bus station nearby, as I had been informed, and only made the trip back in under 5 hours because of an extremely charitable soul named Kristie who happened to be going to the exact place in Karawang as I was (it’s a very spread-out city). This, thankfully, is the norm in Indonesia, not a random act of kindness.
*Durian is a famous yet foul-smelling fruit that I have not worked up the courage yet to try.
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