Restoring the Glory Laweyan and its
Batik
Laweyan, a district in the city of
Surakarta or Solo in Central Java,
has been organized as a center of
Java’s batik industry for more than
a century. It was also known as the
home of wealthy batik merchants who
not only produced original
traditional Javanese hand-waxed
batik but also handled the
mercantile side of the trade,
exporting throughout the archipelago
and abroad.
Modernization of the textile
industry and the advancement of
textiles printed with batik designs
, which cost less to produce, have,
however, caused traditional Javanese
batik to lose out in the competition
with its ‘modernized’ fake. This
situation changed recently when some
‘batik tulis (hand-waxed
batik) aficionados and collectors
began to realize what was being lost
in their cultural heritage and
traditions. Among them are the
Yayasan Batik Indonesia in Jakarta
which collects batik cloths for an
eventual museum, the Himpunan
Wastraprema which donated the
Jakarta Textile Museum’s core
collections in 1976 and 2001, and
Mrs. Nina Akbar Tandjung , a native
of Solo and admirer of batik
tradition.
Mrs. Tandjung is
concentrating her efforts on
reviving Laweyan, having persuaded
some Laweyan batik producers, second
and third generations of Laweyan’s
great batik entrepreneurial
families, to work together to revive
their town’s illustrious reputation.
Several tourist packages have
already been organized, built around
a tour of Laweyan, its grand
mansions, and its workshops.
The batik tulis
process is like drawing on paper:
the ‘pen” is the canting tulis
and the “paper” a piece of woven
cotton called mori, or silk.
The canting tulis has a small
copper basin attached to a bamboo
handle; the basin is filled with hot
liquid wax and ‘drawn’onto the cloth
through a narrow spout. Whatever is
covered with wax will not absorb any
of the dye in the vat. After dyeing,
the wax is removed,leaving undyed
lines on a colored ground. Each time
another color is needed, new areas
are waxed in, while small spots of
color can be directly applied using
a brush dipped into liquid dye.
Demonstrations of
batik tulis-making are conducted
on various accasions, such as
exhibitions, both local and abroad,
in schools, and as private courses
in many cities and towns across
Java. One good place to learn in
Jakarta is the Jakarta Textile
Museum on Jalan Karel S. Tubun No. 6
in West Jakarta.
One man’s adventure into batik
Gunawan Kurnia Pribadi
is a textile and batik designer, son
of a batik-producing family. He sees
the purpose of dyeing cloth as being
to distinguish ane motif from
another. He looks for harmony in his
coloring of motifs which he takes
from traditional batik and nature.
Gunawan has sought his inspiration
by visiting batik centers like
Jakarta, Garut, and Pekalongan, and
sometimes even combines batik with
embroidery. For his motifs, he
prefers fauna and flora and natural
phenomena like water waves, rocks,
blowing wind, bamboo, which he
blends with traditional motifs like
the kawung (touching circles
or oval) and liris (diagonal
stripes). His favorite colors are
pastels and the color of soil,
although he turns to brighter colors
for silk.
The batik
industrialist-cum-designer who has
organized batik-fashion shows in
Solo, Jakarta, and Malaysia, said
his creations are known in many
countries. One of the persons
responsible for this was Mrs. Nina
Akbar Tandjung and her Yayasan Warna
Warni Indonesia, a foundation that
organizes tourist visits to Laweyan,
once one of Java’s most powerful
batik centers. Indonesia’s Minister
for Cooperatives and Small-and
Medium-Scale Enterprises
Suryadharman Ali is one man who has
‘taken the tour’, giving hope to the
people of Laweyan of more serious
government attentions to the
development of Indonesian batik and
their historical town.
More
About Laweyan
Laweyan has had a very special place
in Indonesia’s modern history, as
the home of Haji Samanhudi, , who
has in the batik business and in
1911 founded the organization named
Sarekat Dagang Islam, Islamic Trade
Union. This was the second
organization to come into existence
as nationalism took hold of
Indonesians, however its real
purpose was to promote commercial
enterprise and mutual economic
support amongst the Muslim
community, and especially amongst
the batik producers who were facing
serious competition from non-Muslim
batik entrepreneurs. It was also
aimed at supporting the intellectual
wellbeing of its members and
promoting the true religion of
Islam. In 1911, the Sarekat Dagang
Islam became the Sarekat Islam and
was opened to all Muslims wanting
self-sufficiency and political
independence from the Dutch colonial
administration. Haji Samanhudi’s
magnificent Art Deco mansion is
still intact and inhabited by a
descendant who is still producing
batik.
Laweyan was also where
the Batik Bond or Batik Union was
founded by one Wongsodinomo some
years later, with the purpose of
supplying raw materials, and
especially cotton cambric, imported
by the Dutch who were very
cooperative in view of the effect of
Japanese dumping on the Indies
market. Wongsodinomo was another
important batik producer domiciled
in Laweyan.
The well-known batik
company Danar Hadi, domiciled in
Solo and one of Indonesia’s biggest
batik producers, is owned by a
couple descended from Laweyan
families, although they started this
business themselves. Santosa, the
husband, is the grandson of
Wongsodinomo who had a big batik
business in Laweyan early in the 20th
century and was related to
Wongsodinomo. Danarsih, the wife,
also comes from a Laweyan batik
family, her maternal grandfather
having made batik that his wife
marketed.
It is said that in 1741,
the ruler of Kartasura (which was
the capital before it was moved to
Surakarta), Pakubuwana II, having
been forced to flee by Chinese
rebels unhappy with his
inconsistency vis-?-vis the Dutch,
took refuge in a cave beside Laweyan
river while awaiting a large herd of
horses he had the wealthy Laweyan
batik-enterpreneurs to send him. It
is said they refused and as a
result, they were ostracized. The
historian Soedarmono claims this
daring refusal came from the actual
power in the Laweyan batik
businesses---the women, who had been
taught to work hard and therefore
had no time for people who did not
work hard, like those of the court.
They were so powerful, Soedarmono
says, that their husbands did not
dare to take on extra wives, as
Islam allows, and, in fact, were
excluded from the business. It was
the matriarch who handled the money
and determined how her daughters
were brought up and who they would
marry. It was not until Danarsih’s
time, in the mid-20th
century, that they were given the
freedom to decide their own futures.
But by the end of the 20th
century, there had been so much
change in the batik world that
Laweyan had lost its glory.
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