The process of producing decorated fabric with a wax-resist technique has been widely utilized in many countries all over the world. This fabric-decorating technique, however, is commonly recognized as achieving its highest level of artistry in Indonesian batik (Kerlogue 2004: 17). Batik production and use have been closely associated with the Javanese, the ethnic majority in Indonesia, yet it is they treated as the pride and cultural heritage of the nation. The Indonesian government has proclaimed October 2nd as the National Batik Day and called for Indonesian citizens to wear batik as a mark of national Identity.
Batik gains its special place in the world of textiles, not only for its rich motifs and designs, but also for the symbolic meanings it bears. More than simply a form of cloth decoration, its patterns, colors, and production express various social ideologies and identities. With the advance of commercialization, however, the old practices of batik manufacturing and the embodiment of belief systems in it have diminished in many parts of Java. It is only in the community of Kerek, in rural east Java, the author claims, that the “originality” of batik manufacture and its integrated symbolic systems can still be observed (10). In this community each type of batik made serves to meet a specific purpose, such as, to be worn by a person of particular age, gender, and social status, and to serve in rites of passage and in agricultural ceremonies.
Adding to her previous publications on Indonesian textiles, Rens Heringa’s Nini Towok’s Spinning Wheel is based on close observations made when intermittently visiting the Kerek community during the 1970s and carrying out fieldwork there in 1989-1990. While a great deal of the existing literature on Javanese batik is primarily devoted to court-centered regions such as Surakarta, Yogyakarta, and Cirebon, Heringa’s book brings to the front this overlooked and marginalized batik-producing community, and the author’s goal is to draw attention to its significant role in the historical development of batik in Java.
The ninth book of the Fowler Museum Textile Series, Nini Towok’s Spinning Wheel is divided into eleven headings covering occupational specialization in each hamlet, people’s dress, the design format of cloth, social statuses and textile techniques, the patterning of batik, batik colors, the myth of Nini Towok from whom the Kerek people believe they ”acquired” their batik materials, the ideological system and color combination of batik, the dress of individuals, recent changes in Kerek, and batik in the Tuban region. To ease readers in understanding the Javanese vocabularies, the author provides a glossary of frequently used terms near the end of the book.
What makes this book especially appealing is its richness of colorful illustrations. It contains sixty-four catalogued batik samples with captions explaining their local names, motifs and patterns, symbolic dimensions, and social uses. Bangrod batik, with its bright red color and half-done in its dyeing process, for instance, is typically produced in eastern hamlets of Kerek, and is “commonly associated with the beginnings or regeneration.” Bangrod is accordingly intended for marriageable young women’s wear or a young father’s when burying the placenta of a new-born baby (37).
There are twenty-five figures in the book: nineteen photographs with descriptions of the functions of batik in identifying social statuses; three maps, two of them situating Kerek among the other batik producers in neighboring regions, the third one showing the arrangement of Kerek hamlets that metaphorically represents the life-cycle stages of women linked with occupational specializations and textile products exchanges; and three diagrams illustrating the relationship between stages in the life cycle and the system of color combinations.
Although Heringa’s Nini Towok’s Spinning Wheel cannot be regarded as an ethnographic monograph, since it covers such a wide range of topics, it should appeal to readers who are interested in material culture, especially decorative art, and its symbolic meanings. Heringa’s book is a good introduction to the importance of Kerek’s textile tradition in the evolution of batik in Java. It is, therefore, an inspiring work for a researcher on decorative textiles in Indonesia, or elsewhere.
WORK CITED
Kerlogue, Fiona. 2004. Batik: Design, Style and History. New York: Thames and Hudson, Inc.
--------
[Review length: 689 words • Review posted on January 22, 2011]