T

hrough her perseverance and patience, Uswatun Hasanah, 42, has struggled to preserve the traditional batik of Tuban, East Java, known as gedog, and has introduced it to the world as a cultural heritage of Indonesia distinct from other parts of the country.

In 2010, Uswatun’s batik preservation efforts earned her an Upakarti achievement award from the Industry Ministry.

The name gedog for Tuban’s batik originated from the sound of the machines used to produce batik material, audibly perceived as “dock”.

“I’m proud of being able to meet the request of my grandmother as a gedog batik maker to carry on the tradition and introduce Tuban’s batik motifs to the world before she died,” said the woman.

As a primary school dropout, she started learning batik making at 13.

According to Uswatun, gedog batik making used to be a side job for her, and the cloth was used for personal or ceremonial purposes in her home in Kedungrejo village in Kerek district, Tuban, where most people were engaged in agriculture.

There are no historical records indicating when this type of batik first gained popularity.

However, as related by local elders, gedog batik was already known in the Majapahit era in the 12th to 14th century. Tuban was founded in 1293 as a maritime city with its merchant fleet, and was also a commercial gate in its trade with China and the Middle East.

In his book Nusa Jawa, or Le Carrefour Javanais (The Javanese Crossroads), Denys Lombard refers to Ma Huan, who accompanied Admiral Cheng Ho on his third voyage (1413-1415), during which he recorded that Chinese merchant ships visited Java via Tuban, before proceeding to Majapahit. Located on the northern coast of Java, Tuban was also an important site of Islamic propagation.

Tuban’s gedog batik came, therefore, to be influenced by Javanese, Hindu, Chinese and Islamic cultures. Besides its use for ritual and ceremonial occasions such as weddings and circumcisions, gedog pieces also serve as daily wear, and certain panji motifs are worn by those in noble circles as a status symbol.

Uswatun decided to devote herself fully to the gedog batik business in 1986 when her grandmother, then 105-year-old, passed away. When she died, her grandmother also bequeathed to Uswatun 200 gedog sheets, said to be centuries old, that she had inherited from her ancestors.

“I donated 15 of the antique sheets to the Textile Museum in Jakarta,” said Uswatun, who started her gedog business in 1993.

“I began to produce and offer batik pieces from door to door. At that time, gedog batik wasn’t so popular and I frequently came home empty-handed,” she related.

While developing her business, she also taught weaving and batik making to school dropouts. They later helped her in her work and got paid for it, making Uswatun’s batik business gradually expand and become more successful.

Uswatun has exported gedog batik to Australia, the Netherlands, Japan, Malaysia and Singapore.

Her products also attracted customers at home, in Bali and Jakarta.

Since 1998, Uswatun has organized regular batik-making trainings in Tuban, which have been attended by hundreds of women and school dropouts, thus contributing to their own economic empowerment.

In 2007, Uswatun’s business nearly had to close altogether when her major partner in Bali defaulted on a payment as a result of the Bali bombing in 2005.

She said, however, that her enterprise had been saved due to the support offered by state-owned cement producer Semen Gresik, which paid for her to attend overseas exhibitions until 2009, when UNESCO hailed batik as part of Indonesia’s cultural heritage.

Thereafter, Uswatun began to receive orders for her products from America and Europe.

Today, Uswatun Hasanah not only records a minimum turnover of Rp 200 million (US$21,075) monthly or Rp 2.4 billion annually, but she has also managed to preserve Tuban’s gedog batik while, at the same time, enabling school dropouts in East Java’s villages to complete their education and, in some cases, pursue college studies.

Heringa, a researcher of Indonesian batik from Leiden University in the Netherlands, has noted that Uswatun Hasanah is a craftswoman who has succeeded in reviving Tuban’s gedog batik, which resembles Cirebon batik (West Java), and has saved it from disappearing.