Batik - An Old-Fashioned Javanese Fabric With Various Fabrication Processes

One of highly regarded Southeast Asian tourism countries is Indonesia. Indonesia is a country located in Southeast Asian and stand on really strategic natural and cultural place. It relates to the existence of two continents and 2 oceans surrounding. It is true that Indonesia is surrounded by Asian Continent and Australian Continent and also Hindia Ocean and Pacific Ocean. Placed in a crossing of two oceans and two continents, Indonesia has many cultural and natural products. Among so many cultural products, Batik is quite outstanding in characteristic Indonesia fabrication form. Batik is an old-fashioned cultural Indonesia art ingrained product which is one of some oldest not only in Indonesia but also in the world. It is reasonable because the emersion of old Batik is found in Dutch transcript from 17th century. And, the evident proof can also be seen on wall-carved stone relief of Prambanan statue which is built in AD 800. Batik is not only really full-of-art Javanese fabric but also long-process-needed fabrication. It means that this intricate and decorated Javanese fabric requires a quite long procedure of manual plus traditional fabrication. Wholly, to create a piece of fabric, there are 3 main steps such as typing, sewing, and dyeing. Of course, the process which is used based on ingrained procedure has to be completed with natural ingredients and conventional tools. At least, there are three instruments in designing fabric. The three tools are stamp, wajan, and wax. Besides those tools, manufacture process will need natural material for the cloth such as cotton or silk. Cotton or silk is commonly used in this designing process because these fabrics can perfectly absorb the wax. Besides, it is also because the fabric used has to have high tread count so it can maintain the quality of intricate and decorated design of Batik. And, silky and cotton fabric are also suitable to make batik. As we know, there are at least 3 main tools which are used to design intricate and decorated batik design. They include wax, wajan, and stamp and every of them holds certain and specific role. Wax is liquid material which is used to create the design onto the fabric. The quality and type of wax is various based on the purposes. However, all waxes have same contents such as beeswax, paraffin, resin and animal fat. Beeswax is used for maintaining the malleability. Paraffin is used for friability. Resin is used for increasing adhesiveness as well as animal fat is used for creating greater liquidity. The use of wax has to kept in proper temperature. Cheaper and low quality wax is be used in larger area but expensive and high quality wax is used in narrower area. Wajan is a container which is used to accommodate melted wax. And, stamp is used to create the design of batik. Basically, the choice of those main tools affects the quality of pakaian batik or kaos batik (Indonesian) created.