Batik. Inger McCabe Elliott
interest has mostly been concentrated on central Java even though there have been several excellent works dealing specifically with the north coast. Among these are studies by scholars such as Paramita Abdurachman, M. J. de Raadt-Apell, Alit and Harmen Veldhuisen and more recently by Mario Feldbauer and H.R.H. Hardjonogoro, Robert J. Holmgren and Anita Spertus, Mary Hunt Kahlenberg, Robyn Maxwell and Rudolf Smend. But the fact remains that the study and exhibition of north coast batik has been spotty, especially in late 20th century scholarship. Batik-making has a long tradition in some families, but because the artists kept few records one must rely largely on oral history.
How to explain Indonesia's multi-faceted batik designs? They can be traced to its country's volatile neighbors as well as its own chaotic history. Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim and colonial cultures all contributed to the cacophony of form and color. In modern times it was a national leader, President Sukarno, who after World War II encouraged "Batik Indonesia" in an attempt to create an autonomous textile business.
Other leaders, including President Suharto and now President Megawati Sukarnoputri, Sukarno's daughter, have continued the tradition. But times and customs have changed. When I first visited Java's north coast in 1970, nearly every man, woman and child wore a sarong. Not any more—except perhaps on highly festive occasions. Nowadays, after half a century of tumultuous politics, corruption, greed, overpopulation—and recent attempts by militant groups to form a fundamentalist Muslim state—batik is now considered an art form and important enough to warrant a long tribute in the New York Times.
To preserve the feel and flavor of the times when the magical cloth was in full flower, I have made only a few changes in the original text. Some of Java's batik artists are still alive, some have vanished from the scene. But I like to think their work will continue to give pleasure for many years—in the magical cloth itself, and in the pages of this book. Certainly my study and use of batik has had a profound effect upon me, on how I look at color and design, and how to be daring in my own life and work.
I am grateful to everyone who helped with the first edition of Batik—Fabled Cloth of Java and I want to thank them and others for assisting with this, the third edition and fifth printing: Susan Blum for her yeoman work on an updated bibliography; Dale Gluckman, Curator of Textiles at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for her continued enthusiasm; Mary Hunt Kahlenberg for her corrections to both text and captions; Marit McCabe for her wonderful photography; scholar Joseph Saunders for his astute political comments; Kathryn Darula for her technical assistance; my live-in editor Oz Elliott for his critical eye; and Margaret Halton and her staff at International Creative Management for their help. Most importantly, I wish to thank Eric Oey, my fearless publisher, as well as Noor Azlina Yunus, my caring and meticulous editor.
INGER MCCABE ELLIOTT
STONINGTON, CONNECTICUT
OCTOBER 2003
The roots of batik are ancient, everywhere, and difficult to trace. No one knows exactly where and when people first began to apply wax, vegetable paste, paraffin, or even mud to cloth that would then resist a dye. But it was on the island of Java and nearby Madura that batik emerged as one of the great art forms of Asia. Batik is known to have existed in China, Japan, India, Thailand, East Turkestan, Europe, and Africa, and it may have developed simultaneously in several of these areas. Some scholars believe that the process originated in India and was later brought to Egypt. Whatever the case, in A.D. 70, in his Natural History, Pliny the Elder told of Egyptians applying designs to cloth in a manner similar to the batik process. The method was known seven hundred years later in China. Scholars have ascertained that batik found in Japan was Chinese batik, made during the Tang Dynasty.
Thus batik was already an ancient tradition by the time the earliest evidence of such Javanese work appeared in the sixteenth century. Records from the coast of Malabar in 1516 suggest that painted cloth for export may have been batiked. The first known mention of Javanese batik occurred two years later, in 1518, when the word tulis, meaning "writing," appeared; the term survives today to specify the finest hand-drawn batik. One hundred years later, the word baték actually appeared in an inventory of goods sent to Sumatra.
The word batik does not belong to the old Javanese language; in fact, its origin is not at all clear. Most likely batik is related to the word titik, which in modern Indonesia and Malaysia refers to a point, dot, or drop. Even that accomplished linguist, Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, although he knew the word, neglected to translate batik. However, in compiling a list of occupations he did include Tukang batik, a "cotton printer."
Whatever its origins, the designs and uses of Javanese batik have reflected the vicissitudes of Java's ever-changing society. Three major religions have left their mark, as have a number of ethnic groups with their distinctive languages and customs. And over the years any number of invaders, explorers, and colonists have also brought changes to Java and to its highest form of art.
Java is a five hundred-mile-long connecting link in an archipelago of nearly fourteen thousand islands that constitutes Indonesia—the world's fourth largest nation, with the world's largest Muslim population. About the size of Alabama, Java has an east-west mountain range flanked by limestone ridges and lowlands, with rivers that are navigable only in the wet season. Thirty-five of its one hundred twelve volcanoes are active. With nearly two thousand people per square mile, it is the world's most densely populated island. The great majority of Java's 120 million people live in rural villages, their lives governed by the rhythmic cycles of their crops—rice, corn, sweet potatoes, and tobacco. Because of the fierce overpopulation, most exist at a subsistence level.
By tradition and history, Java is divided into three sections: west, central, and east. To the west lie the Sunda Strait and the cities of Jakarta (formerly Batavia), Bandung, Garut, and Tasikmalaya. This area was once the empire of the Sunda, and people there still call themselves Sundanese. Central Java, with its rich farmlands, is dominated by the cities of Yogyakarta and Surakarta—and features the great temples of Borobudur and Prambanan. To the east is the great port of Surabaya and the island of Madura. Stretching the length of Java lies the island's north coast with its mixed and vibrant heritage.
For two thousand years, Java's north coast was a lucrative trade area, luring sailors and merchants from all parts of the world. Situated in the calm and tranquil Java Sea, beyond the belt of typhoons and angry oceans, the island was on a spur of the trade route between Cairo and Nagasaki, Lisbon and Macao, London and the Moluccas, Amsterdam and Macassar. In Java, cloves and nutmeg from the Spice Islands to the east were traded for tea, silks, porcelains, and opium from China; for brightly patterned cloth from southern India; for cinnamon from Ceylon; camphor from Siam; and a cornucopia of goods from Europe, Africa, and Japan. It was via the north coast of Java that Greeks, Malays, Indians, Chinese, Arabs, Portuguese, Dutch, British—as well as numerous pirates—sailed from the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea and thence to farther ports,
THE LURE OF JAVA
As long ago as the first century A.D., Syrian and Macedonian navigators discovered that seasonal monsoon winds enabled them to sail across the Indian Ocean without hugging the coastline. In about A.D. 150, Ptolemy wrote about Java in his Geography, and in the fourth century the Chinese Buddhist monk Fa-Hsien wrote that he had reached Java ". . . where heresies and Brahmanism were flourishing, while the faith of Buddha was in a very unsatisfactory condition." Within another two hundred years, the silk routes—both overland and by sea—were well established, and the Strait of Malacca, between the Bay of Bengal and the South China Sea, became increasingly busy.
West and north of Java, on the island of Sumatra, the city of Palembang was a center of commerce for Southeast Asia in the fifth and sixth centuries. It was from here that the powerful Malay kingdom, Srivijaya-Palembang, came to dominate coastal Sumatra as well as the Strait of Malacca.
The main sea route from India via the Strait of Malacca and north toward