Batik From Across the Water - by Fiona Kerlogue
Book tickets to Fiona's talk on Thursday 24th April here.
I first encountered batik from Sumatra in 1989, when I was working at the University of Jambi. The city was small, centred on a large market on the south side of the great River Batanghari, which winds its way from the mountains in the west, through Jambi city and down to the east coast and the Straits of Malacca. At that time many traders brought their produce to the market by boat. The customers were mostly from the city, but villagers also crossed over from the hamlets on the north side of the river, quiet traditional communities where most of the wooden houses were raised on stilts above the heightened water level of the rainy season.
To pass my leisure time productively I had joined a batik class near to the university in the suburbs of the city. Our teacher, Azmiah, came from one of the small villages across the water, where batik was still being made. When she invited me to come to her house for private lessons I jumped at the chance. Azmiah produced a blackboard on which she wrote recipes for the different wax mixes and dyes used at different points in the process which I was to copy into my exercise book. Practical sessions followed, in applying the hot wax to the cloth with the copper-spouted tool known as a ‘canting.’ Maintaining the flow of the wax was key, and this depended chiefly on controlling the temperature.
If there was a blockage, I learnt how to blow sharply into the spout to release the wax. After the wax design had been applied, the cloth was immersed in dye; later the wax was removed leaving the design in white lines – and in my case blotches – where the wax had prevented the dye from penetrating the cloth.
I whiled away the evenings at my little house on the university campus practising, applying hot wax to the cloth in my clumsy way. When things were going well, though, batiking was a soothing activity, almost like meditation. The more immersed I was in the process, aware only of the position of my body and the cloth, the temperature and consistency of the wax, the fewer mistakes I made.
Once a week I crossed the river for my lessons in a simple wooden ferry boat with an outboard motor. On one occasion, a youth called out from the riverbank as if I was a tourist. One of the men on the boat shouted back ‘Diam; dia orang kita!’ (‘Be quiet, she’s one of us!’). It was a lovely moment, which reflects the way I felt embraced by the people in the village (1). As I walked by, women would call out ‘Masuk! Masuk!’ (‘Come in!) from their open windows.
Slowly I learnt more about the batik of Jambi, and how it differs from the batik of Java. Women would bring their treasured cloths out from the cupboard in their living room, often the only piece of furniture in the house, and tell me who had made them and the names of the patterns.
Batik was everywhere: at weddings the bride and groom would sit on a pile of batiks formed into the shape of a star; at a baby’s name-giving ceremony the crib was covered with a pile of batiks representing the layers of the cosmos. When someone died their body would be taken to the grave on a bier covered with batik. And of course, batik was worn every day as skirt cloths and shawls by women, and on special occasions also by men and boys (2), as shirts, hip cloths or head ties.
Gradually I became more involved with family life, although my proficiency as a batik worker was slow to improve. I learnt more about the motifs which were mostly of the fragrant flowers used to scatter on a bridal bed or as an infusion for a bridal shower. The perfumes from such flowers were thought by some to attract the spirits of ancestors whose benign presence could be felt at weddings and other festive occasions. The flowers also had a purifying function, especially in the bridal steam bath, when the bride would be enclosed in a palm leaf mat covered with a sarung, melting in the steam from a flower-infused pan by her side.
I learnt about local natural dyes, especially the ones produced from wood chips which once gave Jambi batiks their characteristic golden glow. The dark veining where the rich brown marelang dye seeped through cracks made in the wax contrasted with the yellow ground made by lembato bark, combining to look like sparkling gold cloth when seen from a distance (3). An abiding memory is a boat trip with one of our neighbours floating across acres of flooded rice fields to the edge of the forest, where he gathered the marelang bark from the trunk of a tree.
Government programmes to train new batik makers, together with rising incomes, growing demand and entrepreneurial makers, mean that much more batik is made now than it was in my day. New products, designs, fabrics and colours have become popular. Jambi batik is flourishing, bringing change but ensuring continuity of tradition in the villages on the north side of the Batanghari River.
Fiona Kerlogue was Deputy Keeper of Anthropology at the Horniman Museum for many years. She is now editor of the journal of the Oriental Rug and Textile Society and a Research Associate at SOAS, University of London. Fiona lived two years in Indonesia to study for her doctorate. She has put on a major exhibition at The Horniman and published widely, including in the Oxford Asian Textile Group journal. Her most recent book is ‘Batik: Traces Through Time’ published by the National Museum, Prague. Fiona will be exhibiting from her collection in our upcoming ‘Batiks of Asia’ exhibition.
