It would be impossible to visit or live in Malaysia and not to be exposed to one of the country's most highly developed art forms, “batik”. On your first visit to a batik store or factory you will undoubtedly experience an overwhelming stimulation of the senses - due to the many colors, patterns and the actual smell of batik.
Natural materials such as cotton or silk are used for the cloth, so that it can absorb the wax that is applied in the dye resisting process. The fabrics must be of a high thread count (densely woven). It is important that cloth of high quality have this high thread count so that the intricate design qualities of batik can be maintained.
The cloth that is used for batik is washed and boiled in water many times prior to the application of wax so that all traces of starches, lime, chalk and other sizing materials are removed. Prior to the implementation of modern day techniques, the cloth would have been pounded with a wooden mallet or ironed to make it smooth and supple so it could best receive the wax design. With the finer machine-made cotton available today, the pounding or ironing processes can be omitted. Normally men did this step in the batik process.
I have experienced the hands on of making batik during my high school time and I really enjoyed the whole process. Hope that our Malaysia Education Department will still include batik as one of the arts subject in school.
3 comments:
the batik really nice~~ :D
I really admire those making the batik.
ya,i remember..in my secondary school days ,i also got make batik,but all spilled out,turn out like shit...hahahah
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