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Jakarta Post

Surabaya gets innovative with mangrove batik

Batik artist: A woman draws a design on a batik cloth at a batik group center in Surabaya

The Jakarta Post
Fri, March 19, 2010

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Surabaya gets innovative with mangrove batik

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span class="inline inline-right">Batik artist: A woman draws a design on a batik cloth at a batik group center in Surabaya. The groups use mangrove fruits to color the batik. JP/Indra Harsaputra

The mangrove forest on the eastern coast of Surabaya (Pamurbaya) and its benefits to local people have inspired artists from the city to create new batik motifs, thus enriching the artistic variety of batik as the nation’s world-renowned cultural treasure.

Unlike most other batik pieces, what are now known as Surabaya’s mangrove batiks are processed using a new method, with different designs and materials. These innovative and environmentally friendly products help promote the local economy and have changed the practice of mangrove tree felling.

“While canting [the spouted dipper method] has been traditionally linked with batik making, we use paintbrushes as an innovative technique, and we also offer a variety of different motifs like rabbits or buffalo heads,” Agustina Ruswandari (50), a batik maker of the Rungkut mangrove batik art group SeRu told The Jakarta Post.

Although the batik painting technique at first seemed odd to batik makers accustomed to using the canting method, Agustina claimed she found it easier to apply a brush, and that it had even piqued the interest of young people to learn the art. 

“Sixty batik makers have been working with SeRu. This number is rising as orders from government and private circles are flooding in, while local youths are now keen to join our group,” she added.
About seven years ago, it was hard to find batiks unique to Surabaya, with its urban dweller majority.

Women in the East Java capital had mostly chosen to build their corporate and industrial careers instead of getting together to learn batik painting.

This is not the case in Solo and the coastal area of Pekalongan, Central Java, or in Tuban, Sidoarjo and Madura, East Java, where the art of batik making has continued to grow.

Surabaya began to explore its own style in 2004 after batik artist Putu Sulistiani Prabowo delved into local legends and applied the designs of clove flowers, roosters as well as sura (shark) and buaya (crocodile), long believed to be the mythical animals from which the city’s name originated.

Mangrove motif: A mangrove motif is shown on a piece of batik. The motif has been designed and developed by a group of batik makers in Surabaya. JP/Indra Harsaputra
Mangrove motif: A mangrove motif is shown on a piece of batik. The motif has been designed and developed by a group of batik makers in Surabaya. JP/Indra Harsaputra

Before adopting the unique features, Putu had to do years of research, visiting various libraries and consulting a number of elderly community figures in Surabaya. Today, Putu owns a successful batik business in Surabaya with a gallery, Dewi Saraswati Batik, on Jl. Jemursari Utara II/19, Surabaya.

Three years after Putu experimented with this new style of batik, Lulut Sri Yuliani, another batik artist and patron of SeRu, created new Surabaya motifs drawing inspiration from her childhood spent around the mangrove forests of Pamurbaya, Surabaya.

Prompted by her anxiety over the illegal logging activities and the spoiled condition of Pamurbaya as the downstream garbage dump of the Surabaya River, she invited local residents to use the mangrove fruits falling from the trees to color batik.

“The fruits are first heated and their liquid is used as a coloring material. But I also use the liquid waste from mangrove-fruit food and beverage processing,” she said. The residue of the mangrove fruits is turned into compost and the water, after washing the colored batiks, is used for watering plants.

“The compost is distributed to local people for urban greening while the rinse water from the batik has been proved to be safe and fit for plants,” she added. Mangrove batiks soon became widely popular in Surabaya and outside Java. Orders kept increasing with students and employees obliged to wear batik uniforms on Fridays.

“Mangrove batik patterns are different. I prefer motifs that go beyond the normal standards to exhibit the dynamic, open and natural traits of Surabaya’s identity,” she pointed out.
The local community’s economy had thus improved with the large orders and those formerly felling trees are now gathering mangrove fruits to be sold for batik making.

Agustina, for instance, earns Rp 600,000 (US$65) a month from her work. Before making batik, she relied solely on the income of her husband who works with a perfume distributor firm and earns a salary of less than Rp 2 million.

Uniquely, mangrove batik buyers get a certificate for joining the effort to conserve the mangrove zone in Pamurbaya. Buying a piece of batik means indirectly planting a mangrove seedling.
“So besides being proud of owning a piece of typical batik art of Indonesia, buyers are also contributing to the solution of global warming,” Lulut said.

The SeRu group’s batik innovation can be a model for batik industries in other regions where chemical coloring waste has often caused environmental damage.
Based on the Pekalongan environment office, the city’s batik center has 17 medium- and large-scale batik industries and thousands of small-scale batik makers dumping their waste into the Bremi, Meduri and Banger rivers.

The waste discarded comes from the coloring and rinsing liquids, which is hard for the river ecosystem to neutralize because it contains kerosene emulsions and coloring substances.
Consequently, most of the communities living on the riverbanks cannot consume their well water and suffer from skin complaints.

— JP/ Indra Harsaputra

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