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PROLOGUE

For much of my professional life I saw the world in black-and-white. Buddhists and Catholics killing each other in the streets of Saigon—black and white. Ulanova and Plisetskaya in performance at the Bolshoi ballet—black and white. Marlon Brando on a Mekong steamer—black and white. Lithuanian survivors of World War II—black and white. I was a photojournalist and those were my colors.

Then one day quite a few years ago, my black and white world exploded into glorious color. It happened in a tiny, nondescript shop in Hong Kong—that moment when the splendors of Java's north coast batik burst upon me. It was an epiphany of sorts: suddenly revealed was a wondrous textile cosmos, where lions roar ferociously, ducks paddle serenely, mythical animals defy gravity and surreal flowers unfold their brilliant petals. The batik artists of Java's north coast splash their colors with controlled and uncontrolled abandon.

Entranced by what I first glimpsed in that Hong Kong shop, I set out on a mission: to unravel the mystery of batik. Before long, I was traveling the length of Java's north coast, working with local Javanese, Chinese and Arab batik artists, helping them design new patterns and rearranging old ones; mixing colors never before used in batik and demonstrating that it was possible to produce batik in lengths of thirty-two yards, long enough to be used not just for clothing but for upholstery and drapery as well. Later, my company, China Seas, Inc., helped open new markets for batik in Europe and Asia, in North and South America.

All the time I was learning, watching and learning some more. At first timidly and then with a bit more confidence, I began buying batik that seemed unusual. I used my eyes. Did a particular batik resemble another in color, design, and technique? Chances were that they both came from the same region, the same town, the same period and quite likely the same artist.

During this long and sometimes arduous search, I traveled to four continents, crawled through cob webbed attics, slogged through slithering mud, battled flying cockroaches, and once was apprehended by gun-toting policemen when I arrived unannounced in some remote village. I pestered scholars and friends alike in the hope of collecting and showing what had never been seen before. I also drew on my earlier training as an aspiring historian. I was gradually able to put most of the textiles into what seemed to be an appropriate cultural, geographic, and historic context. But sleuthing aside, in the world of batik there will always be dissenting opinions as well as new discoveries to be made.

For hundreds of years, Java has been at a crossroads of trade, near the routes sailed by Marco Polo, Ferdinand Magellan, Sir Francis Drake and St. Francis Xavier. Trade brought with it a succession of religions and waves of colonization. Indonesia's official motto is "Unity in Diversity," which might just as well describe the wonders of its batik. Indonesia's climate is tropical, its predominant religion is Islam, its architecture is a mixture of Dutch colonial and petrodollar kitsch, its middle class is Chinese, and its lingua franca is Bahasa Indonesia. Its ancient monuments were built to both Buddhist and Hindu gods. Each and every one of these influences may be found in the many-splendored batik of Java's north coast.

Batik—Fabled Cloth of Java was conceived more than three decades ago. The north coast batik illustrated here comes from many collections, including my own. The book served as the catalogue for a major exhibit—of the same name—that was the brainchild of Mattiebelle Gittinger of the Textile Museum in Washington D.C. From the nation's capital the exhibit traveled to the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada, the Cooper-Hewitt in New York City and the Sewall Museum in Houston, introducing the wild and wondrous colors and forms of north coast batik to a wider audience.

That exhibit and that book were the impetus for curating my own collection of about 750 Southeast Asian textiles—complete with detailed descriptions and photographs—that I subsequently donated to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. In 1996 the museum produced an impressive exhibit of my collection that also traveled to the Cleveland Museum of Art. Fabric of Enchantment—Batik from the North Coast of Java, written by Harmen C. Veldhuisen and Rens Heringa, accompanied the exhibit.

Organizing and cataloguing materials for a book on batik is no easy task. Textiles are notoriously difficult to preserve, especially in the tropics. Mary Hunt Kahlenburg, a knowledgable textile connoisseur, at a recent Australian exhibit and roundtable called "Sari to Sarong," showed three woven, carbon-dated cloths from the 15th and early 16th centuries. Nevertheless, I personally found no existing batik created before 1800.

The first person to write about batik was Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, the energetic entrepreneur who founded Singapore—that vital link to the China trade. That was in 1817, after a five-year sojourn that established Raffles as an expert on the Indies. More than fifty years later, E. van Rijckovorsel, a Dutchman, spent four years in Java and collected batik that he donated to the Rotterdam Museum. By 1883 batik was shown in a colonial exhibit in Amsterdam, and fifteen years later another exhibit in The Hague spurred further interest. This show bore the curious title "Colonial Women's Labor" (Koloniale Frauenarbeit). A monograph by G. R Rouffaer and Dr. H. H. Juynboll appeared in 1900, and six years later the Dutch colonial government assigned S. M. Pleyte and J. E. Jasper to do a further study of folk art, including batik. These four men provided the cornerstone for all subsequent Javanese batik scholarship.

Over the years, 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