JAKARTA: Indonesia has seen a steep decline in the number of artisanal batik producers over the past four years across key production centres, from Java to Sumatra, as pressure mounts from a surge of mass-produced batik-like fabrics, most of which are imported.
Batik artisan Ahmad Failasuf from Pekalongan, Central Java, struggles to compete with mass-produced batik and to find young workers to rejuvenate his business.
In business for more than a decade, Ahmad said that consumers were increasingly turning to batik-like fabrics as a cheaper option amid weakening spending power in the country.
Batik-like fabrics are typically mass-produced through printing, allowing producers to offer inexpensive imitations that resemble traditional batik.
In contrast, the production of genuine batik is more time-consuming, involving artisanal techniques like stamping or hand-drawing, with the resulting products referred to as batik cap (stamped batik) and batik tulis (written batik), respectively.
Both of the artisanal methods use wax, but the hand-drawn batik is the more labour-intensive process, where intricate patterns are drawn directly onto the cloth using a tool called a canting, while the stamping method allows for replicating a pattern using copper stamps.
The competition from industrial products has affected traditional batik businesses, Ahmad noted, adding that his sales fluctuated but had at one point dropped by as much as 50% from the average.
Artisans were also becoming scarce, Ahmad added, with few young people taking up the craft of making genuine batik.
“In the past, there were batik artisans who graduated from elementary school and junior high school. Now, there are none.
“Batik artisans are mostly above 30 or 40 years of age,” he said.
By the next decade, he warned, batik artisans would be “on the brink of extinction” and traditional production methods would be replaced by new technologies.
Association of Archipelago Batik Lovers chairwoman Ayu Dyah Pasha said the younger generation generally lacked interest in mastering the skill to become a batik artisan. — The Jakarta Post/ANN
