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Lawang's hand-woven sarongs survive modernity
Test of time: Manual weaving looms are still used in sarong production
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Test of time: Manual weaving looms are still used in sarong production. (Photos by Aman Rochman)
Sounds from manual weaving looms are heard behind the walls of an old building riddled with weeds.
Some people, most in their fifties, are deep in concentration, their eyes set on every string of yarn on the looms, connecting the strands to ensure they are not cut off in the weaving process.
The noisy raps of the looms have slackened with the aging workers and factory, which is located on the Malang-Surabaya highway in Lawang, Malang in East Java.
Activity inside Rajin sarong factory, however, keeps going and has withstood the test of modern textile manufacturers.
The factory was established 59 years ago.
'We've continued to maintain the old motifs or colors and manual technique for producing our hand-woven sarongs,' said the owner, 65-year-old Assegaf.
The factory produces koyo (sarong with motifs) and titorong (sarongs without motifs).
Hand-woven sarongs are made from base yarn as base material and from pattern yarn as feeding material. The yarn comes in various sizes and the type of yarn used is rayon.
Sarong weaving starts with cleaning rolls of yarn by washing them to remove oil and dirt for easier dyeing. The base material is then dyed to create dominant colors.
Patterned yarn is dried and given motifs first, before entering the dyeing process.
After being dried, patterned yarn will be rolled and treated with motifs by using plastic strings, which cover the yarn against unwanted colors. Later, the yarn with strings is dyed ' a procedure known as dimedang.
The next step is called disekir, where yarn colors are arranged according to desired motifs. Clusters of arranged yarn are again rolled with a simple tool called keteng or boom. High skill and accuracy is required for arranging the dyed yarn.
'I learned it from my father and I've worked here for 13 years. Few people are skilled in yarn color arranging as it's difficult and demands precision,' said 59-year-old Solikin.
In a day, he handles a roll of yarn that can produce 20-25 sarongs.
Later, all the yarn is ready for weaving. Employees, mostly middle-aged, work from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m.
'There were many of us before, some 70 people. They quit as they grew older and became busy with household chores,' said Liasih, 55.
Spending their spare time weaving on flexible working hours, most of the workers have been at the factory for around 15 years, earning Rp 25,000 (US$2.13) per piece of sarong.
Now Rajin only has six workers left and each produces one sarong sheet a day. A worker will cut the woven sarong sheet to the length of four meters.
The factory's woven sarongs are marketed to Surabaya, Semarang and Yogyakarta at the retail price of Rp 75,000 per piece.
'I tried to change our sarong motifs by giving them more vibrant colors but they did not sell well, so I returned to soft tones,' Assegaf says.
For Ramadhan, sarong production increases from 30 to 60 sheets to cater to rising demand. Rajin sarongs have become part of traditional costume for the Tengger ethnic group living on the slopes of Mt. Bromo.
Assegaf said unstable prices of yarn had posed problems to the survival of the sarong business.
But as long as old hands are capable of operating the looms, he said the factory would continue producing sheet after sheet of woven sarong, prolonging hopes for a boom in sales during Ramadhan.
' Photos by Aman Rochman
