40 Years in Search of Batik - by Diane Gaffney

Book tickets to Diane and Jim's talk on Thursday 10th April here.

I remember my first piece of batik– a length of blue and white fabric bought in Singapore in 1983. I went to Java soon afterwards and started to realise how important batik is in Java and to the whole region. I didn’t realise then how important it would be to me too.

At first I was seduced by batik pictures in free-flowing designs with bright splashed, smudged and shaded dye effects. These were made by young men in tiny studios in the “Water Castle” area of Yogyakarta for the travellers making their way there.

But I soon became more interested in the rather sombre coloured batik worn by many older women, women in rural areas and used to carry their goods to market or hold babies on their hip.

Jim and I came back to Yorkshire the following year to start our business selling handmade items (including some batik) from Indonesia. Our first stall was on a Flea Market in Leeds and things grew from there – including our 6-week-old baby!

In the 40 years since, our pursuit of textiles has led us to remote villages and city workshops, and we’ve made friends and contacts in Java and in many other parts of the world.

My first teachers were the women who sold second hand batik from their big fabric wrapped bundles. Because they had to assess and price each piece, Bu Soedalmi and Bu Marsi could quickly tell the difference between a cheap print, a “tjap stamped” batik and a much more expensive hand drawn “batik tulis”. And sometimes they came up with absolute gems.

We also got to know individual batik artists, like Tatang who produces amazing abstract contemporary batik but works with a group of highly skilled women who add depth and traditional detail to his designs. And Nia and Agus who work on silk, collaborate with artists from all over the world, and whose incredible work is in museums and galleries all over the world.

We have become friends with factory owners like Hani Winotosastro and Lina from Cirebon – two women who are the last of many generations to run their family batik businesses. And the Pria Tampan family who run a factory producing batik fabrics for the quilters of America.

They could tell me where a batik came from, the names of the designs, what it signified, and when it was appropriate to wear it (e.g. at a wedding, family celebration, or when visiting a bereaved neighbour) If I was invited to a wedding or a “baby shower” I took careful notes of the batik on display.

Some of these people are lifelong friends - like Susi Kelik who grew up in the old Water Castle area. She still runs daily batik workshops and her own batik gallery and knows just about every batik artist in the city.

In Thailand we see Win every year in his village in the mountains of Chiang Mai Province. 

There we learn more about indigo dyeing, hemp production and batik made with small hand- held tools, and nowadays with small metal stamps. The incredible pleated skirts worn by H’mong women are still being made there.

We regularly meet up with Panee and her mother, an “Indigo Champion” in Phrae. The family have been indigo dyers for generations – and Panee introduced teak wood blocks to the process, producing very popular indigo and white batik.

In Laos we met women who showed us the batik tools their mothers had brought with them from former village homes in China, but who had never made batik again. Their hemp pleated skirts were plain – without batik decoration.

In Guizhou, southwest China we caught a gob smacking New Year Festival where all the many subgroups of the Miao minority were resplendently represented in traditional costume. All of it, on close inspection, machine embroidered and printed batik. 

And we saw stalls in local markets with printed versions of the batik which just a few years earlier would have been made by women themselves, for baby carriers, shoulder bags and of course their wonderful pleated skirts.

Since 1984, we’ve lectured and taught batik workshops, organised exhibitions, served on the committee of the Batik Guild, and taken groups of artists over to Java to learn from the masters. In Indonesia, batik has been recognised by UNESCO and is protected and promoted, while in China it is rapidly disappearing.

This exhibition gives a small glimpse of the beauty and variety of the batiks of Asia with some of our favourite batiks collected over that time, and just as importantly, a glimpse of the people who made them and the traditions they come from.

Jim and Diane Gaffney have travelled far and wide, collecting and trading in textiles and are founding members of The World Textile Day group. They will be exhibiting from their extensive collection in our upcoming ‘Batiks of Asia’ exhibtion in April.