A Batik Factory

On the way back to the hotel from the Prambanan Temple Complex we stopped off at a batik factory. I’ve always been a fan of batik, and was looking forward to picking up a few yards of material while in Bali. I knew that even in Bali it wouldn’t be cheap, but I was hoping it would get cheap enough for me.

I did manage to get a little, but not enough to do much with. Still, I’m happy.

The entry hall into the batik factory was long and dim with a series of hangings on the wall. Several displayed traditional batik designs. One was a map of Indonesia done on fabric so that the designs most common in a particular region or island formed the shape of that region or island. If not for the names inked on I would not have understood what I was looking at. One – labeled A through H – showed a design put through the dye baths eight times.

This factory employed both of the two main ways to do batik. The first is to draw a design on the raw fabric, then go over the design with a pen that lays a trail of beeswax. The drawing of the design – typically done by men – employed a light table. The designs are mostly per-determined, though not always traditional.

The pen work was done exclusively by women. It was a slow, and carefully done process involving heated pots of beeswax sitting on the floor next to the women’s stools. The pens have chambers that look a bit like honey pots about the size of one and a thumbs attached to the top of the pen, then a tube that the wax is supposed to flow through to a tip where the wax comes out. This is the most traditional way of doing it.

At the time we went through there were half a dozen women working diligently. They draw in the design a different way each time the fabric goes into the dye bath to cover the parts of the fabric that are not supposed to change color for the next run through.

The more colorful and intricate a finished product, the more of this detailed work must be put into it. A single length of fabric can take weeks to complete.

The other method is to take a wooden block with the desired design carved into it, dip the design in the beeswax, then press it to the fabric to transfer the hot wax. This was clearly stated as the purview of men because it takes a lot of arm muscle to do it right. The block must be carefully lined up each time it’s pressed.

The blocks aren’t necessarily square, or even stamp-like. This one is not a set of four – it’s one stamp with four parts.

Regardless of which method is used, the wax must be removed between each run through the dye bath. This is done in two steps. First it is put in hot water. Most of the wax floats to the top. But not all. What is left must be scraped off by hand.

The wax is collected for re-use. However, the expensive beeswax can not be re-used by the hand held pens. The tubes through which the beeswax flows are too narrow. Any bit of fabric fiber that might have come off with the wax clogs them. There is no such problem with the block printing technique.

The block printing never gets the expensive virgin wax. The wax is collected in rectangle pans to make rectangle blocks. It can only be used a couple more times before it becomes so full of fiber that it causes problems with the block.

There is one more technique that this factory has nothing to do with. That is a mock-batik. Instead of using wax and dye, the mock-batik simply prints on the fabric the way you might expect in a regular factory, only using a design that looks like batik.

These are much cheaper, and often exported. It’s not surprising it would be cheaper to make fabric that way, since it can be done very quickly with very little use of a human’s time or effort.

The difference is easy to pick up. When fabric has been through a dye bath, it is colored on both sides the same amount.