Читать книгу Malaysian Batik - Noor Azlina Yunus - Страница 10

A section of the badan of a skilfully block-stamped (batik cap) sarong from Terengganu, 1950s, decorated with floral motifs, among them orchid buds and blooms.

In the middle of the nineteenth century, the invention of the cap (pronounced ‘charp’) in Indonesia, a copper block that applies wax for an entire design on to a piece of cloth with a single imprint, revolutionized the batik industry which had hitherto been dominated by the labour-intensive stylus-like canting (tjanting in Indonesian, both pronounced ‘charnting’) for waxing cloth. Using a cap, a batik worker could wax twenty sarongs a day instead of spending a month or more hand-waxing a single sarong. This increase in the speed of production was deemed imperative in the mid-1850s, not only to fulfil the needs of a growing demand for batik locally and in markets outside Indonesia, such as Malaysia, but also to offset the flood of cheap printed European textiles that had begun to replace Indonesia’s handwoven products. It was feared that both Java’s batik industry and the wider country’s handloom traditions would be decimated. Although many purists disparaged the cap at the time for producing an inferior product—marks were left on the cloth where the stamped units overlapped at the edges—there is no question that it saved Indonesia’s batik industry from extinction and also allowed the technique to spread to other places. Cap textiles quickly outstripped their European printed counterparts in terms of quality, and because they were affordable were able to reach a much broader, albeit lower priced and less discerning market. Cap work could also be combined with canting work to produce yet another variation of wax-resist batik. Later, the cap technique was to extend beyond the sarong into stamped yardage (batik ela) for tailoring a broader range of apparel as well as items for home use.

A part from its significant effect on batik production and the commercialization of batik, the introduction of the cap signalled a change in demographics in the batik industry in Indonesia. While the application of wax on to cloth with a canting had been almost exclusively a task reserved for women, as it is still today in Indonesia (and Malaysia), in the many batik workshops and factories that were established along the north coast of Java, especially by entrepreneurs of Arabic and Chinese origin, men became increasingly involved in what was basically a semi-industrialized industry. Cap work was heavier and more physically demanding than canting work, thus opening up a role for men in the ‘production line’ as stamp makers, batik printers and dyers.

As noted in Chapter 1, Malay women in the peninsula—not forgetting the small communities of Straits Chinese women in Penang, Melaka and Singapore known as Nyonyas—adopted the habit of wearing batik sarongs long before the Malays in the east coast states of Kelantan and Terengganu began making them. It is believed that the use of metal stamps and wax was introduced to the Malay Peninsula as late as the 1930s by Javanese batik makers who came to seek employment in batik workshops and, in the process, impart their knowledge of batik making. Some were brought in specially to teach the art of batik cap at workshops in Kota Bharu and Kuala Terengganu, such as a batik maker by the name of Raden Mokhtar who was employed at the workshop of Haji Che Su bin Haji Ishak in Lorong Gajah Mati, Kota Bharu, Kelantan, in early 1931. There was no simultaneous introduction of the canting in the Malay Peninsula. As Sarah Arney points out in her pioneering work, Malaysian Batik: Creating New Traditions (1987), the Malays were not interested in learning the Indonesian canting or tulis technique. It was too labour-intensive and the sarongs produced too expensive. By using the cap technique, the Malay batik workers, predominantly men as in Indonesia, could produce sarongs in greater quantities and at prices that were within the reach of ordinary people. Although the stamps used were initially made of imported copper, as they were in Indonesia, when the price of copper rose, Malay stamp makers turned to recycling tin cans.

A section of the kepala and badan of a screen-printed cotton sarong from Terengganu, 1998. The opposing pucuk rebung triangles and floral borders on the kepala, combined with the patterning of flowers and foliage on the badan, were inspired by Pekalongan sarongs from the north coast of Java.

Materials and Methods

Producing good cap designs in batik is a lengthy process requiring specially made tools, careful planning of the design layout and expertise in stamping and dyeing. As Mohamed Najib Ahmad Dawa says in his introduction to En Bloc (2009), a catalogue of an exhibition of some 500 batik stamps or cap held at Malaysia’s National Art Gallery, ‘The stamping technique is actually a more deliberate process than the canting method.... It requires more tools and greater schematic planning in the image-making compared to the hand-drawn method.’ There are, however, limitations to the possible intricacy of cap design and the compositions are made rather rigid by the need for repetition. Another significant difference, Najib says, lies in the dyeing process. ‘The stamping technique requires a pre-planned scheme of colours, due to the process of dipping and dyeing in the bath. In the case of hand-drawn batik, the dyes are applied directly onto the surface and a myriad of colours can be applied by the stroke of the brush.’

It is perhaps to be expected that the somewhat coarse locally made tin stamps did not produce the fine, consistent lines typical of Indonesian batik cap; rather, as Arney points out, they resulted in a ‘fidgety’ look. Nevertheless, the earliest Malaysian batik cap fulfilled a local need for sarongs for everyday wear and some were even exported to Sarawak, Brunei, Singapore and Thailand. The block technique could also be used to produce stamped cloth in yardage, which became increasingly popular. Although batik production halted during the Japanese occupation of Malaya (1941–5) because of a lack of imported cotton from England and India, by the early 1950s production had resumed. Haji Ali’s factory in Terengganu was employing 200 workers and there were some 60 factories operating in Kota Bharu, Kelantan. Batik cap was on its way as a fully established handicraft in Malaysia, reaching its pinnacle in the 1970s.

A typical monotone block-printed sarong featuring repetitions of a grouping of small motifs, including a fish, the top border containing a meandering vine, the bottom border a row of triangles.

A small selection of stamped motifs created from among the 500 metal batik blocks displayed in the En Bloc exhibition at the National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, in 2009, and in the accompanying exhibition catalogue.

Made of strips of copper, brass or zinc, metal waxing stamps range in size from 20 x 20 cm (8 x 8 inches) to 5 x 10 cm (2 x 4 inches) and consist of entire design units.

Floral motifs predominate on metal blocks, which are often a work of art in themselves.

The structure of a sarong showing the decorative kepala (head), the badan (body) and the narrow borders that enclose these elements.

Tools

The most essential tools in batik cap are, of course, the waxing stamps or cap. Evocatively termed sarang bunga or ‘flower nest’, the stamps consist of entire design units made of strips of brass or zinc plate twisted to the shape of the design and set upright within a frame attached to a curved iron handle soldered to the reverse side; the copper stamps initially imported from Java were considered too heavy to handle. A piece of cloth is usually wound around the handle to provide padding. Made either by specialist stamp makers (tukang blok) in home-based, family-operated batik stamp factories or in independent workshops, the cap vary in shape and dimension but for ease of handling rarely exceed 24 cm in any direction. Most Malaysian cap range in size from 20 x 20 cm (8 x 8 inches) to 10 x 15 cm (4 x 6 inches) to as small as 5 x 10 cm (2 x 4 inches). Many of the stamps, crafted with intricate motifs, are works of art in themselves. However, the process of making them demands a certain degree of stylization, just as it does in handwoven textiles like kain songket because of the inability of both processes to create smooth curves and absolute realism. In contrast, in hand-drawn batik, motifs like blossoms may appear more realistic and fluid.

The Art of the Metal Block

Zakaria Ismail has been making batik blocks for almost four decades, apart from a few years in the mid-1980s when he dabbled in batik making. He started learning the art when he was twelve years old from a villager. Belying the simple tools of his trade—cutters, pliers and chisels, a soldering iron, rolls of sheet tin or brass, wire and a table to work on—a cap requires great skill and precision on the part of the metal craftsman. Many of the stamps, crafted with intricate motifs, are beautiful works of art, and are sturdy enough to be used repeatedly for many years.

Zakaria starts by drawing the design of the required stamp on a piece of paper. He then cuts 3-cm-wide strips off the thin copper sheets and positions them vertically over the paper in the shape of the design using a small pincer. Nails driven into the table along the sides of the strips hold the strips in place. He next painstakingly solders the assembled strips together; smaller pieces of wire are used for dots. Once the entire design unit is complete, it is filed with a chisel to make it completely level. Zakaria then fixes it vertically within a sturdy open metal frame of the same material before finally attaching a curved iron handle. Each block takes about three days to complete.

Today, Zakaria is passing on the tradition of batik block making to the next generation by taking on interns from Kraftangan. The tradition, however, is in jeopardy due to more efficient technology and modern batik processes such as brush painting and silk-screen printing, as well as a lack of interest among young people to learn this art. Limited demand for the blocks comes from corporations and agencies who like to commission their own personalized designs. There is also a revival of interest in making wax-stamped batik among young textile designers.

Zakaria Ismail putting together the components of a metal batik block.

Thin strips of copper are twisted to the shape of the design, soldered and fixed vertically within a frame attached to a handle.

Traditional Indonesian batik sarongs, and the Malaysian ones that were to reproduce them, have a distinctive pattern structure. The sarong has two principal components, a ‘body’ or badan and a ‘head’ or kepala, both parts enclosed by narrow borders. The badan is the largest part of the cloth and it is interrupted, usually in the middle in Malaysian sarongs, by the kepala, a broad band that occupies a quarter or a third of the sarong and runs vertically down its whole width. By contrast, on unsewn Indonesian sarongs (kain lepas or ‘free cloth’)—as on many other Southeast Asian textiles—the kepala often stretches down one of the unsewn ends. To decorate the specific areas of a sarong, as many as ten cap of different sizes and shapes may be used, but the usual number is six. The larger blocks are used on the badan and kepala of the sarong and the smallest on the borders enclosing the kepala and along the bottom of the cloth.

Preparing the Cloth

The earliest stamped batik was made with finely woven cotton with a tight, evenly woven surface to resist rather than absorb the wax. Initially imported from India and then Europe, most of the cotton after War World II has been purchased from Japan and includes voile, poplin and lawn. Traditionally, preparation of the cloth is the task of men. After being cut into specific lengths, the pieces of cloth are boiled and then rinsed in water to remove any sizing elements such as chalk, lime or starch. A small amount of caustic soda or potassium carbonate may be added to the boiling water to expedite the process.

Waxing

The printer or tukang cap, also known as the tukang terap (terap means ‘to print’ or ‘to engrave’), is responsible not only for stamping the patterns on cloth but also for the preparation of the table and the wax. Cap designs are usually applied by men standing at waist-height square tables, tilted at an angle, which are covered with sheaths of fibres from the trunk of the banana plant that have been softened in water. These sheaths, which are laid lengthwise on the table and levelled, are not only cool and wet to the touch, causing the wax to solidify when pressed on to the cloth laid above, but also allow a soft ‘foundation’ on which to work. Nowadays, to save the time and effort of replacing the banana sheaths once they are dry and shredded, it is not unusual for the tables to be tightly covered with padded cloth or inset with flat, plastic-covered foam cushions.

The wax (lilin) comprises a mixture of beeswax for malleability, paraffin for friability, resin for adhesiveness and used wax (lilin pakai), sometimes mixed with animal fats for greater liquidity. The type of cloth to be printed determines the proportion of ingredients. The molten wax is taken when needed by the batik printer from a centralized vat placed over an open fire pit. It is then kept at a constant temperature in a pan placed over a spirit burner or on top of a circular concrete hearth placed behind and to the right of the printer. Inside the pan is a wad of folded cloth or burlap approximately 30 cm (12 inches) square. Saturated with wax, it serves as a stamp pad. The cap is pressed on to the pad to absorb just enough wax to transfer a neat imprint of the design in wax when it is stamped on to the fabric and to allow it to penetrate the fabric and solidify upon contact with the banana sheath or soft foam padding below.

Patterns are chosen from available samples or are decided in consultation with the client. The usual technique is to place the stamp on the cloth with the right hand and to apply pressure with a sharp jab to the back of the stamp using the left hand; a strip of cloth wound around the palm of the left hand prevents cuts caused from impact with the back of the cap. The process of stamping is repeated row by row, the printer changing cap as the prearranged design requires, until the cloth is completely covered with the wax design.

Experienced tukang cap are able to work with speed, at the same time applying even pressure to each stamp. They also take great care to match the components of the design exactly, the design of the badan meeting precisely the design of the kepala and border without any overlapping. The manual nature of the work—and the speed at which many of the artisans have to work, especially if they are paid for piecework—can, however, lead to overlapping secondary lines, blank spaces and blotches of wax splattering the cloth. Design elements applied earlier may be protected from subsequent stamping by the printer overlaying them with paper replicas of the reserved design.

Steps in the process of making batik cap. From above left: measuring the cloth; dipping the block into the hot wax; stamping the wax pattern on to the cloth using a cap; applying the dyes directly on the cloth with brushes; dipping the cloth in a dye vat; washing the cloth; boiling off the wax; hanging the cloth to dry.

Dyeing

After the initial waxing, the cloth is ready for the first dyeing in one of several wooden or concrete troughs that hold the dye baths. Unlike in the canting or hand-drawn method of batik, in which colours are painted directly on to the cloth with brushes, the cap method requires successive waxing and dipping in dye baths depending on the choice of colours in the design template. Single cloths may be submerged in the dye, swirled around and lifted out with a stick, but to enable the dyeing of several metres of cloth at one time for sale as yardage, a roller method is used to pull the cloth evenly through the dye bath as well as to support the weight of the wet fabric.

After the first immersion, the cloth is dried on a rack or line or spread on the ground outside the workshop, then waxed for a second time to save certain design elements before it is dyed again. The process is repeated depending on the choice of colours to be applied. The wax is then removed in a large metal wok-shaped container filled with boiling water. The hot, boiled cloth may also be slapped against a vertical concrete slab to break off any remaining particles of wax before it is finally washed in detergent and hung out to dry.

The process of waxing and dyeing and the resulting images can be changed by varying the choice and sequence of colours, by using the discharge method of removing colour with an acid bleach or by applying some colours by hand.

Motifs, Meanings and Colours

Regardless of the patterns and motifs observed on the earliest imported Javanese sarongs, the Malays have always been inclined towards motifs derived from the natural world—arabesques and curvilinear or angular foliated shapes modelled after their environment—and these are clearly exhibited in their handwoven kain songket and kain limar as well as in their woodcarving (panels and other architectural elements), metalware (goldwork, silverwork and brassware), weaponry (the keris sheath), embroidery (gold-thread tekatan), fibreware (baskets and mats) and earthenware (cooking pots and water jars). This inclination reflects the environment in which they worked—and continue to work—but it is also the result of generations of cross-cultural influence and the exchange of material goods as well as the Islamic preference for geometric and denaturalized stylization. As Arney says, ‘The Malay aesthetic, as for any people with such diverse experiences, must be a composite of historical events and surrounding environment.’ The shapes and forms, moreover, change with time and fluctuate in any given time; they are never stagnant. Malaysian batik, although considered a traditional Malay craft, is, in reality, less than a century old. The very fact that it is so recent frees it in many ways from stereotypical designs, allowing opportunity and freedom for innovation.

At the same time, the designs on early stamps ensure a certain amount of continuity of traditional patterns and motifs and the cultural values that are embedded in them. In a carefully designed batik cap sarong, as Mohamed Najib Ahmad Dawa points out in the En Bloc catalogue, ‘the motif is from the same source although it is placed in different parts of the scheme.’ He gives the example of a schematic arrangement illustrating the several phases in the growth of a flower: the pre-bud (seed) and bud in the pucuk rebung or bamboo shoot motif on the kepala (head) of the sarong; opening buds and entwining tendrils on the narrow borders encasing the kepala; and fully opened blossoms, leaves and stems on the badan (body). These, in turn, he says may symbolically represent the metamorphoses of a child into an adult.

Indonesian Influences

It is widely known among batik enthusiasts that Indonesian batik has a vast repertoire of well-documented geometric, figurative and background designs—some researchers estimate over 3,000—derived from natural and mythical sources, local folklore and the waves of foreign culture that enveloped the archipelago; the latter include motifs inspired by Indian patola cloths, Chinese textiles, ceramics and carvings, and European floral patterns. Among the most distinctive geometric or ceplokan designs are forms of flora, fauna and bird life standardized into repetitive, symmetrical shapes, diagonally slanted designs, groups of ovals arranged in fours, and patchwork and spear designs. Figurative or non-geometric designs, generically termed semen, include some of the most imaginative and ornamented batik designs inspired by Hindu, Buddhist and indigenous Javanese designs as well as European, Chinese and Indian sources. Placed against a background of swirling foliage, semen motifs are most apparent on hand-drawn Indonesian batik and frequently feature the mythical winged Hindu-Javanese Garuda, Chinese-inspired butterflies, phoenixes and peacocks, lions, mythical dragons and naga serpents and natural phenomena such as rocks, clouds, mountains and landscapes. Isen or background designs are simple, repetitive motifs, such as the Chinese-derived swastika or the Javanese fish-scale motif, which usually cover the whole surface of the cloth.

Because of the availability of imported Indonesian sarongs, it is understandable that Javanese styles, especially those from Lasem and Pekalongan on the north coast of Java, which were decorated with both a kepala and floral motifs, influenced the patterns and motifs on the first Malaysian sarongs, right up to the early 1950s. Indeed, Muslim traders on Java’s north coast encouraged the production of particular styles for Muslim consumers. Many Malay women favoured the Lasem style of sarong with its plain, cream-coloured background covered with a kepala featuring the pucuk rebung (bamboo shoot) motif, called tumpal in Indonesia, in which two rows of equilateral triangles containing blossoms and stems run down each side of the kepala with the points of the triangles facing each other. Applied on innumerable Malay art and craft objects, the pucuk rebung has been variously interpreted as a symbol of fertility because of its rapid growth or a modified form of the mythical tree of life. The pucuk rebung was also the most common decorative pattern on the kepala of the prestigious locally handwoven gold thread kain songket, and so it was an eminently familiar motif. The badan on either side of the kepala pucuk rebung was decorated with meandering vines and stylized plant forms.

This early twentieth-century sarong from Lasem on the north coast of Java, made for Chinese use, illustrates wax-stamped Javanese-style diagonal stripes, geometric patterns and triangular end borders in combination with hand-drawn motifs of auspicious creatures from the Chinese pantheon, all rendered in typical Lasem reds on a cream background.

The ‘lotus garden’ theme, featuring wading, swimming and flying birds on the badan of sarongs and a floral bouquet on a contrasting background on the kepala, was adapted by Indo-Chinese batik makers from Indo-European batik themes at the beginning of the twentieth century, specially for the Chinese communities in Java, Singapore and the Malay Peninsula.

A studio portrait of two Straits Chinese Nyonya wearing simple scalloped kebaya blouses fastened with brooches, and boldly patterned central Javanese batik sarongs, c. 1930s.

A Baba Nyonya couple, the man in Western dress, the woman in a floral front-opening tunic paired with a Pekalongan batik sarong and beaded slippers, c. 1930s.

Other women preferred imitations of the more brightly hued Indo-European or Pekalongan-style sarong, with a large, showy, multicoloured floral bouquet on the kepala and intricate Javanese-style geometric motifs on the badan. Unlike in Pekalongan where the bouquet was invariably hand drawn with wax, on the Malay Peninsula it was created with a series of carefully positioned metal stamps of flowers, leaves and buds connected to stems, while the various colours were applied by hand. Much of the intricate background detail and patterning found on the original Pekalongan sarongs was eliminated. However, the demand by Straits Chinese Nyonyas and wealthy Malay women for high-quality hand-drawn sarongs featuring the Pekalongan bouquet continued to be met by imports from the north coast Javanese ateliers, especially from those in Pekalongan.