Laweyan handmade batik makers struggle on

By Sulistyo Budi N

LAWEYAN, Central Java (JP): The rows of imposing houses on some of its streets tell of Laweyan's onetime prominence as a center for handmade batik.

And its decline is sadly evident in their rundown condition and that most stand empty.

Its heyday was from 1960 to the late 1970s, when factories bustled with the activity of workers producing some of the finest batik in the country and the houses were home to wealthy merchants.

The Islamic Trade League, which later merged with the Islamic League, was pioneered by H.O.S. Cokroaminoto along with large- scale batik merchants in the town. Takashi Siraishi's Jaman Bergerak (Changing Times) explains that batik was the foundation of the economic and social movement at the time, when Surakarta was known for its batik cottage industries.

The glory began to fade in the 1980s, when mass production of printed batik became commonplace. There also was the problem of regeneration because successful craftspeople rarely thought about the need to pass on their skills and knowledge to others.

Rohyani, 45, who has long been part of the handmade-batik industry and is one of the few survivors, said, "Formerly, nearly all the people who were successful started from the business of batik. Economic success through the batik industry then gave birth to noted entrepreneurial figures who rose to national level, like Cokroaminoto, for example."

Rohyani did not seem destined for a career in batik because he was never good at art. But in junior high school in Surakarta he was impressed by his fellow students' drawings, and he decided to try his hand at that. After school, he decided to make his own sketches, a process which took six months to learn.

The simple pencil sketches were then transferred to a cloth and painted by means of a canting (a small dipper used to apply wax in the batik process) and dyed.

The cloth was dyed and given a motif of natural scenery before being sold by his aunt in Yogyakarta. His first successful sales led to his lifelong immersion in the industry.

Death blow

He acknowledged that the real deathblow for many handmade- batik industries was mass-produced batik made by printing machines.

Although lovers of fine batik will always choose handmade batik, the mass-produced variety is better in terms of design, motifs and the smoothness of the production process.

"Some of my friends' business have gone bankrupt. Other batik craftspeople said I was lucky as I could survive while others had ceased production," Rohyani said.

The great equalizer for both the print and handmade-batik businesses was an economic crisis which struck the country beginning in mid-1997. As the rupiah plunged to shocking lows, businesses counted themselves lucky if they could survive to see another production day.

Rohyani said he realized that survival meant changing with the times and meeting market needs.

He started producing batik which was suitable for casual activities, such as beach sarongs for the foreign-tourist market and casual shirts.

The biggest demand came from Bali, where an expatriate American working on the island contacted him.

An order was placed for 500 casual shirts and 800 sarongs. "Sometimes I was bewildered in making them because they continually asked me when they would be completed. Impact from the monetary crisis caused the orders to decrease," Rohyani said.

Most orders continue to be for casual shirts, beach clothes, house dresses and batik-motif silk clothes. Orders tend to come in spurts, but Rohyani said their value varied from Rp 6 million to Rp 15 million.

He insists on payment in advance, and is fond of recounting the story of a foreign buyer who sent his driver to pay for a large order amounting to many millions of rupiah -- which was handed to him in wads of cash!

His success has not gone unnoticed by other entrepreneurs, some of whom know a good thing when they see it and are copying his ideas.

Rohyani said his hundreds of motifs are taken from wayang (leather puppets) and natural scenery, but he said he had forgotten all of them.

Some of his motifs -- he estimated dozens -- have been copied by batik print makers trying to take a piece of the lucrative market.