Batik-making

Membatik means covering parts of a cloth with hot wax so those parts take no dye when the cloth is dipped. What the batik-maker draws is therefore what will stay as it was, not what will be coloured — an inversion requiring her to think of the finished cloth before the first colour goes in.

For every colour, covering and dyeing are repeated, and the wax is removed by boiling in between. A cloth of three colours requires three waxings, three dyeings and three removals, and each stage requires the cloth to be dry. That arithmetic explains why one fine hand-drawn batik takes months, and why the prices of hand-drawn and stamped batik cannot be compared directly.

Three things circulate under one name. Batik tulis is waxed with the canting, a small spouted tool, line by line. Batik cap is waxed with a copper stamp, far faster, and has been made since the mid-nineteenth century. Batik cetak or printed batik is not batik at all: its pattern is printed on cloth without wax and without repeated dyeing, and what is sold is a picture of batik rather than batik.

The UNESCO inscription of 2009 names the technique of waxing, so printed batik falls outside it. The difference is not visible in a photograph and only in the cloth: dyed batik is coloured on both faces, while printed cloth is not. This encyclopedia states that practical test because it is the only one a buyer can use without relying on a seller's word.