What Is Batik?

What does batik mean in Indonesia?

In Indonesia, batik is a living craft that accompanies a person from birth to death, and UNESCO inscribed Indonesian batik on its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2009. UNESCO describes babies carried in batik slings decorated with symbols meant to bring luck, special designs for pregnancy and marriage, and the dead shrouded in funerary batik. Batik is also everyday dress, worn in business and academic settings.

Its colours and designs carry symbolic meaning, and its motifs record outside influences: UNESCO lists Arabic calligraphy, European bouquets, Chinese phoenixes, Japanese cherry blossoms and Indian or Persian peacocks among their influences.

Court batik and restricted motifs

At the Yogyakarta palace, some motifs are a matter of rank, not taste. Museum Sonobudoyo in Yogyakarta records that Sultan Hamengku Buwono I declared Parang Rusak a forbidden motif in 1785, and that palace records describe this batik larangan (forbidden batik) as believed to hold religious and mystical power. The museum states that Yogyakarta’s forbidden motifs still include Parang Rusak Barong, Semen Gedhe Sawat Gurdha, Udan Liris and Kawung, among others. It also writes that today most people can wear kawung, parang or udan liris if they can afford them.

These ceremonial and court meanings are separate from batik’s place in fashion: an office shirt and a motif reserved by a sultan are different kinds of object.

How is batik made?

Batik is made by covering parts of the cloth with hot wax, called malam in Indonesian, dyeing it and removing the wax in boiling water, then repeating the cycle for each further colour. The cloth is usually cotton or silk.

Indonesian national standards (SNI) name three kinds of batik by the tool that applies the wax:

Cloth printed with batik-style motifs, by screen printing or other printing, falls outside all three. Doddy Soepardi, an adviser to the Yayasan Batik Indonesia, calls it a batik-motif textile; many shops call it “batik print”.

Batik belongs to the resist family with tie-dye, shibori and bandhani, which resist dye by binding or folding the cloth, and ikat, which resists the yarns before weaving. Block printing differs because the colour is pressed onto the surface.

What does real batik look like up close?

Real batik shows its pattern through the cloth, because the dye soaks in rather than sitting on the surface. Look for three features:

• The back. The motif appears in the same colours on the reverse.
• Fine veining. Dye that seeps into cracks in the wax leaves thin, irregular lines, a mark of the hand process.
• Filling marks. Motifs are outlined by a line called the klowong and filled with isen: dots (cecek) and short lines (sawut).

Britannica gives blue, brown and red as the traditional colours, with layered effects built by repeating the dyeing.

How is batik graded?

In Indonesia, batik tulis is graded fine (halus), medium (sedang) or coarse (kasar) under SNI 08-0513-1989, still in use as of 2018, by the width of its drawn lines and the number of isen per centimetre. A 2018 study in Indonesia’s Jurnal Standardisasi sets out the thresholds:

A separate standard, SNI 8302:2016, sets quality requirements for batik tulis cloth. It allows at most five stains, forbids tears and holes, and tests colour fastness to washing, rubbing, sweat and daylight.

How do you tell hand-made batik from a printed copy?

Turn the cloth over: if the back is white, it is a printed batik-motif textile, not batik. That is the test given by Doddy Soepardi of the Yayasan Batik Indonesia (Indonesian Batik Foundation), because printed colour does not penetrate the cloth.

A dyed-through back is a necessary sign, not proof. Britannica notes that machines now apply wax in traditional Javanese patterns and can reproduce the veining of the hand process. So ask the maker which method was used, and read “batik print”, “batik style” or “batik design” on a tag as describing a look, not a method. Batik is also not Ankara, the factory-made wax-print cloth; the Dutch carried both Javanese cloth and technique to Europe.

How do you care for batik?

No batik-specific care standard appears in the sources consulted, so treat it like any dyed cloth of unknown fastness: gently, in cool water, out of strong sun. The SNI tests name washing, rubbing, sweat and daylight as the stresses that matter, so ask the maker whether the piece is colourfast, and wash it alone the first time.

Is batik sustainable?

Batik’s impact depends on its dyes and on how its waste water is handled. Universitas Muhammadiyah Surakarta, citing the Solopos newspaper, reports that batik waste has polluted the Premulung and Jenes rivers in Solo, and a survey by Pekalongan’s Environment Department found Pekalongan’s batik businesses produce over 5 million litres of waste a day. Some small businesses are not connected to treatment plants because of the running costs.

A life-cycle study by Dr Etika Muslimah of the university found indigosol dye slightly more harmful than reactive dyes, and she recommends natural dyes, which cost more and take longer. Leftover wax can be mixed one to one with new wax. Ask which dyes a maker uses and how waste water is treated: a better guide to sustainable fashion claims than the word “handmade”.

How do you buy batik respectfully?

Buy batik from makers in Indonesia, and ask three things: tulis, cap or kombinasi; where it was made; and the name of the motif. If a motif has court associations, such as Parang Rusak, ask whether it suits the occasion before wearing it to a Javanese ceremony.

Wax resist is not only Javanese: Britannica notes that it was apparently practised widely in Southeast Asia, with wax applied with bamboo strips on Sulawesi (Celebes). Compare chintz, the painted and printed cottons of India, which have their own method and history.