Bunga berkembang berkembangkah cinta ini yang telah lama menduduki and bertahta di dalam sanubari… (A flower blossoming does this love also blossom that has for so long been enthroned in our souls…)
The
lyrics of a dangdut song from a radio snuck into our ears as we entered
a simple batik workshop in the back of a house. It made me smile inside;
I knew the song, Elvi Sukaesih's Cinta Rahasia (Secret Love), because
it was popular when I was in junior high school, around 20 years ago!
I was delighted to hear it still being played on the radio here in
Cirebon, and it still sounded great.
But my nostalgic daydreams about my youth ended when someone turned off the radio; the workers had realized that the arrivals were their boss, Mas Komar, and myself. Although he is still quite young and of modest appearance, on 6 August 2005 H. Komarudin Kudiya, S.IP, M.Ds., was entered in both the Guinness Book of Records and the Indonesian Museum of Records. He had set a record by creating a batik cloth from seamless woven silk 446.6 meters long, with 407 motifs and 112 different colors, which wrapped the Governor's Office (popularly known as "Gedung Sate") in Bandung.
"Priben kabare, Yu?" Komar asked a woman working on a pink
cloth, in Cirebon dialect. "How's it going, Sis?"
"Alhamdulillah, I'm healthy," the employee smiled, without
stopping work. In this workshop with a cement floor and no ceiling,
around 20 workers, mostly women, were sitting on dingklik (small wooden
benches) with their legs stretched out straight. The dim lighting,
which relied solely on sunlight entering through the door and the cracks
in the walls, didn't seem to bother them. The lines they traced with
their canting (batiking tools) accurately followed the lines traced
on the cloths. The seemed to know instinctively which parts should
be covered with malam (wax) and which should not. Occasionally, as
if on command, three or four women sitting near one another would stand
up together and refill their canting with the liquid malam being heated
on a small stove.
In a relatively open corner of the room, a man was immersing waxed cloth in a pale yellow solution. "After this dries out a bit, the color will change to purple," said Ading, Komar's brother-in-law. For a layman like myself, it was hard to understand how this yellow liquid could dye the cloth purple.
Behind this workshop was another workshop owned by Komar. In addition
to these two workshops in Panembahan village, Komar owns two others,
in Trusmi Barat and Trusmi Timur villages, to the north of Panembahan.
Trusmi and the neighboring villages have long been famous as batik
centers. It is said that the local people learned these skills from
Ki Gede Trusmi, a follower of Sunan Gunung Jati, who propagated Islam
in the region in the 16th century.
So we headed off to Trusmi Barat, by motorcycle. I shared a bike with Ading. We drove through narrow alleys passable only by one motorcycle, crossed small drainage ditches, and passed in front of homes whose occupants were waxing or drying batik cloths. Finally, we arrived at a structure with masonry and wooden walls, in which around 30 workers, men and women, were at work.
Here I could see a lengthy entire process, starting with copying the batik pattern from tracing paper onto the cloth to be batiked. Before this, the cloth had been soaked in a chemical to enable its fibers to absorb the dye. Next is the batiking process using canting and malam, followed by dyeing with the appropriate color; the cloth is then air-dried in the sun. The last step is nglorod, in which the wax adhering to the cloth is removed by boiling the cloth in a soda solution. You then have a piece of batik cloth with a beautiful color.
This entire process has to be repeated for each color to be included in the pattern. "For batik processed only once, it takes six days. Two processes take two months, and batik tulis can take up to three months," Ading explained. The reason it takes progressively longer for more colors is that the process of covering up certain parts with"malam becomes increasingly difficult on cloth that has already been dyed.
And the dyeing process is not as simple as you might imagine. Generally, three types of dyes are used in batiking: naphthol for darker shades such as blue, dark blue, black, and coffee brown; indigo for pale hues such as pink, light green, and pale purple; and reactive dyes for brighter colors.
Obtaining an orange color does not necessarily mean using an orange dye. "We can get orange using this white dye. After it's soaked and dried, the color will change to orange," Ading said, pointing to cans containing dyes, most of which looked white. Sometimes mixing one dye with another will produce an entirely unexpected color. I was quite surprised and wondered how they produce the various colors using these different dyes.
"Is there a written guide to the colors?" I asked.
Ading shook his head. "No. The person responsible for the dying
has memorized which dyes need to be mixed together to produce each
color." Very impressive…
The amount of dye used was also less than I expected. To dye cloth
for a shirt, only five grams is used for the first color. For each
successive color, other dyes are used in larger quantities, perhaps
twice as much. "If the first color is too intense, the second
color won't show through," explained Ading, who has one daughter.
Around midday, a food seller stopped by and offered her wares inside
the workshop. The workers were intensely involved in their batiking,
and ordered packets of rice and side dishes without even getting up.
With the 60 people working in this workshop in Trusmi, Komar produces around 50 pieces of batik per week. All the output is sent to the showroom in Bandung. Although the workshops seem crowded and full of activity, the work done here is actually only half the batik production process. The true heart of Batik Komar is not here, but in Bandung. There, in addition to the batik showroom, Komar has a studio and workshop that produces the blueprints for batik motifs that are the beginning of the batik production process. This also includes making copper plates for producing print (as opposed to hand-drawn) batik.
Before the process begins at the Trusmi workshops, Komar has already done a lot of preliminary work: selecting the theme of the batik motif, studying the design, sketching the pattern, studying the colors and the cloth, and deciding whether it should be made using the handmade (batik tulis) or print (batik cap) process. Only then do the workshops in Panembahan and Trusmi proceed with the rest of the process.
Komar jokingly commented, "In Bandung, not a single drop of malam is allowed to fall to the floor." Obviously – all his staff in Bandung do is to design the batik motifs, mostly using a computer program called AutoCAD.
Komar's main reason for basing his batik business in Bandung is to discourage others from copying his designs. Also, because he has a staff and complete facilities, Komar can make cap in only two weeks, whereas other batik producers take up to three or four months because the cap plates are made in Pekalongan.
Last September, Komar was invited to exhibit his works in the Canary Islands, Spain. For this exhibit, Komar brought batik with mollusk motifs, which he had carefully prepared after studying various mollusk species, both on the Internet and in books he bought. Previously, when he was invited to exhibit in Japan, his designs incorporated snowflake patterns, again copying nature.
Because of Komar's commitment to studying and creating new batik motifs, he has registered an enormous number of batik patterns. Of the roughly 200 Cirebon batik motifs registered with the Directorate of Patents, Batik Komar has registered around 150 motifs. It's not surprising that since Batik Komar was founded in 1998, Trusmi batik has regained its reputation. Trusmi is now known not only for batik with traditional motifs such as paksi nagaliman, megamendung, ayam alas, sawat penganten, nagaseba or sawunggaling, but also for modifications of these classic patterns and for entirely new, contemporary motifs.
Komar's
perseverance in creating new products has also affected the selling
price of his batik. While traditional batik artists still find it difficult
to sell a piece of batik tulis for Rp 300 or 400 thousand, even the
batik cap produced by Komar sells for over Rp 1 million. This has also
helped him to create jobs; Komar now has 225 employees. In addition
to the traditional selendang, Komar also produces tablecloths, women's
dresses, men's shirts, curtains, wall hangings, slayer, Muslim women's
head coverings (jilbab and kerudung), futon covers, and even kimonos.
Furthermore, Komar is willing to share his knowledge. He is often asked to give batik training in Sumatra, Kalimantan, and as far away as Sulawesi. Komar, a father of four, does not worry that sharing his knowledge will harm his business. "Instead, it just inspires me to continue creating new batik motifs."
Batik Komar
Showroom:
Jl. Sumbawa No. 22 Bandung 40113
Tel: 022-4237688, 4210720, Fax: 022-4237688
Workshop:
Jl. Cibeunying Permai V No. 25 Bandung 40191,
Tel: 022-2500822
Jl. Anggrek No. 250, Panembahan, Plered, Cirebon 45154
Tel: 0231-321725
E-mail: batikkomar@bdg.centrin.net.id
www.komarbatik.com
- Photos : Batik Komar Documentation Section -
