Batik—Its Making and Its Use 
A PROCESS OF WAX-RESIST PRINTING THAT IS ADAPTED TO MANY DIFFERENT 
FABRICS AND EFFECTS—HOW IT IS DONE AND SOME OF ITS POSSIBILITIES 
by Am y M ah Hicks 
T HE various printed cottons and 
woven fabrics of the East are 
daily coming more and more into vogue. 
They are used for dress fabrics, furni¬ 
ture coverings, table covers and just 
now as the colorful background for an 
ivory bas-relief or a drapery on a 
bare wall. Though Batik, the Javanese 
printed fabric, has been known and used 
here for some time, it is not generally 
known that the handicraftsman can cre¬ 
ate these interesting results himself. A 
great many fabrics may he used, and 
many interesting designs worked out 
without especial talent or technical 
training. 
Batik-making is a method of printing 
fabrics by a process of wax resist, and 
the process of wax-resist printing, 
or, as it is sometimes called, ‘‘reserve” 
printing, is the method of protecting 
certain portions of a piece of cloth from 
the coloring matter in the dye vat when 
the cloth is dipped. The wax is melted 
and deposited on the surface of the 
cloth, and the hot resist penetrates thor¬ 
oughly the fiber, thus protecting from 
the dye the portions it covers. 
The wax resist is, of course, al¬ 
ways laid on in a design or pattern. 
When it has been finally removed, 
the pattern appears on the surface 
of the cloth and is properly called a 
“reserve.” 
Batik can be applied to all kinds 
of material, hut on some with bet¬ 
ter results than on others. For in¬ 
stance, silk and cotton are the most 
easily handled. Next would come 
leather, and, last of all, linen, be¬ 
cause in the dyeing of linen there 
are certain technical difficulties. 
Wool is never used in batik-mak¬ 
ing. 
Through their possession of the 
island of Java, the Dutch got their 
intimate knowledge of the craft of 
batik-making. The native Javanese 
are masters of this craft. The low¬ 
est illustration on page 290 shows 
a sarong, or native loin cloth. 
These loin cloths are made of light¬ 
weight cotton, a material specially 
well adapted for the process of 
1 he tjanlin g, or wax container 
The end of a chiffon scarf, printed in black, blue, red. white and 
green on an orange ground 
Good examples of tied and dyed work, or reserve printing without 
a wax resist 
wax-resist printing, as the hot wax 
penetrates the fiber freely and easily. 
Cotton can he dyed beautiful and per¬ 
manent colors; and, moreover, it gets 
an unusually beautiful texture from the 
handling necessary in the dye process. 
The texture it finally acquires through 
the application of dye and the wax re¬ 
sist has somewhat the effect* of velvet 
in color quality and tone! where the 
original color of the unbleached cotton 
appears in any pattern, it has the look 
of old parchment. This is because the 
wax of the resist is never completely 
removed from the fiber of the material 
and adds depth of tone to its color and 
texture. 
The sarong in the illustration is a 
wonderful example of the art of design 
and the dyer’s craft. In almost all 
Javanese batiks the design is purely ab¬ 
stract and dependent on its beauty for 
the relation and arrangement of the line 
and mass. 
However, the type of design applied 
to batik may be either representative or 
naturalistic, as it pleases the designer. 
The pliable technique of batik offers 
few obstacles in the carrying out of 
any kind of detail. Indeed, in some 
instances textures can he repro¬ 
duced ; on general principles, how¬ 
ever, it is well for the beginner to 
restrain a desire for naturalistic 
ornament, and to try at first for the 
simpler effects obtained by the wise 
use of mass and line arrangements. 
There are certain features of ba¬ 
tik which, so to speak, have grown 
out of the manner in which it 
is made. The illustration of the 
sarong shows one of these — a net¬ 
work of fine lines throughout the 
background. This network is 
caused by the crackling of the wax 
resist, as it dries and shrinks, or 
when the cloth is wrinkled or bent. 
One can see that the network is 
thickest where the cloth has been 
most bent, that is, where it has been 
hung in the center over a pole to 
dry the wax. The color in the dye 
vat gets into these cracks and pene¬ 
trates the fiber of the cloth when it 
The tube is for pouring the wax 
(289) 
