ian and sharon

Notice how straight her free-hand lines are - I guess if she's been drawing these designs since she was 10, she's pretty much got the skill mastered! What patience!

This hot, smoky, piney-wax odor permeates the area whereever batik is being made.

These are batik stamps. It is dipped into the hot molten wax and then it is pressed onto the fabric for making prints more speedily on larger areas. These are metal, and are works of art in themselves! I hope to bring one home with me if I can find one for sale!

Olivia took us to the Serena mall to see a woman making batik in the traditional method. Young girls, as young as 10 years old, sit and lay wax layers of design on fabric with a wax dipper which looks like a pipe with a spout, through which the molten wax runs. This woman has been doing this since she was 10, and is now about 35. She has the steadiest hand and can draw straight lines without a wiggle, and just inch-by-inch, creates her designs in wax. After one layer of wax, the cloth is dyed, and then new colors are blocked off with wax, the fabric is redyed, and so it continues until desired colors cover the fabric. The wax is finally soaked off or scraped off when the desired result is completed. The smoke from the wax is very strong smelling, and the women and young girls who do this usually are housed in dark, poorly ventilated rooms, sit on the floor, and make very little moneyfrom this painstaking labor. They are incredible artists. Batik is Indonesia's traditional dress/fabric/and each tribe has it's own design. There are just thousands of masterful designs to choose from. Silk batiks are the most expensive, but the coolest, the most delicate, and are truly exquisite.

The Indonesian President has decreed that on Fridays, the whole nation should wear batik to show solidarity. This is a fairly new law, but it has helped the batik industry to skyrocket and certainly does lend a feeling of "belonging" when all attempt to follow his rule.

BTW, there will be Presidential elections on July 8th. The current President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has been President since October 2004 and is widely expected to be reelected, but time will tell. Pray for a peaceful outcome!

This was taken outside the mall on Saturday night while waiting for our driver. The crowds at malls indicates that there is a very wealthy segment of this population despite the abysmal poverty in all directions.