Batik

Production of batik is a long and complicated process and it is all handmade. This is what makes the characteristics of the ready garment something special as you can feel the concentration and attention to detail that the fabrics have gone through in their creation process. The batik process is an old traditional way of dyeing materials in Indonesia and through this heritage the Indonesian people are masters of this process.

There are a multitude of different ways to make batik all of whom give the end product different effects or characteristics. There are two main types of batik called handstamped and handpainted. Both use hot melted wax as a means of defining the motif on the fabric. In rare cases you will find residual wax on your batik garment, it has a dark brown colour and when it is ironed it can look like a spot of oil. If after ironing you can scratch the spot and it changes colour, then it is most certainly wax and can be removed by washing at high temperature.

A copper stamp of approximately 30 cm that is dipped in hot wax and then onto the fabric is used to make handprinted fabrics. The fabric then undergoes a variety of colouring/bleaching processes before it is boiled to remove the wax. In fact it undergoes a total of 8-10 processes before it is finished

Handpainting on the other hand uses a canting; a small container filled with hot wax that is held like a pen and which has a small tip out of which the wax flows when put to the fabric. The fabric is pulled out tight on a frame and is hung vertically. The batikmaker which in this case is an artist then uses the canting as a pen and draws a pattern on the white fabric. Once a pattern is made, the different areas surrounded by wax can be coloured in different colours by hand. The wax will in this case prevent the colours from mixing. After colouring the fabric has to be left in the sun in order to fixate the colour and then the fabric is boiled to melt and remove the wax. The end product will be a fabric with a coloured motif that is surrounded by a white outline. In case your garment has small imperfections in colour or design, please take this as a charm and a characteristic of a handmade product. The uniqueness of the batik process ensures that not two batik garments are the same.