New embroidery technique from an old hand

By Bambang M.

YOGYAKARTA (JP): After her recent success in creating the biggest embroidery in the country, and possibly in the world, now 70-year-old Jumima Dewi Nugroho has recorded another success. This time a new embroidery technique comes out of her old hands.

"I call it the random embroidery technique," said the woman, who is also an owner of a batik museum here.

Dewi who has seven grandchildren and three great grandchildren said she discovered the technique after conducting a number of experiments of her own.

In conventional embroidery, all the threads go in the same direction but in her new technique, the threads may go in different directions. "Just like in painting, you use strokes in different directions," she explained.

The result is incredible. With her method, a person's face that she "draws" with the embroidery technique will not be far different from a picture. And unlike other embroidery, her works feature perfect gradation of colors.

"It was very difficult to embroider people's faces that would closely resemble the real ones. The old technique cannot produce good results or a perfect gradation of colors," Dewi said.

In her big house on Jl. Dr. Soetomo in Yogyakarta, she now has embroidery of 50 faces, some of them are Indonesian heroes like Prince Diponegoro or top figures like the late first president Sukarno.

Dewi said sometimes she gave away her embroideries to relatives of people whom she has transformed into embroidery.

"In 1991 my son gave the embroidery of president Sukarno to his relatives and it was Mbak Megawati (Sukarno's daughter and now the country's Vice President) herself who received it," she recalled, adding that it was the first embroidery of a person's face that she had created.

Dewi, however, does not create embroidery for money. She does it simply because she likes it.

She has been embroidering since she was young. However, Dewi began to do it seriously 20 years ago, after her husband, Hadi Nugraha, suffered a stroke. To keep her sick husband company, she embroidered and has been doing so until now.

To her knowledge, no one is embroidering using her technique, so she is considering setting up an embroidery museum in her house. "Maybe I'll realize it next year," Dewi said.

Crucifixion

Among her works, she considers her 4 meter x 0.9 meter embroidery depicting Jesus Christ's crucifixion on Mount Golgota--the biggest embroidery she has ever made--her masterpiece.

Inspiration for the piece came from the world's biggest glass painting of Jan Syka's The Crucifixion, which is kept at the Glendale Museum in California, the United States. In 1994, Dewi and her husband visited the museum and her husband was so impressed by the painting that he bought a photo of it.

"I don't know why but I was so challenged to make the crucifixion embroidery on my return," she said. With the support of her husband and her entire family, she started the embroidery in 1996.

She enlarged a copy of The Crucifixion's photo onto a 4m x 0.9m paper. Then she placed the picture on a special cloth, locally known as strimin. She then embroidered the cloth by tracing the picture.

She completed the piece in three and a half years.

"Of course I didn't do it every day. I just did it when I wanted to. Sometimes I didn't even touch it for a week," said Dewi, adding that once, she was forced to stop work for two months due to an eye surgery.

Her hard work is not wasted. Many people have been impressed by her masterpiece and because of its extraordinary size, many people have advised her to register her work at the Indonesian Museum of Records (MURI).

Her work was declared by the museum as the biggest embroidery in Indonesia on Aug. 4 this year.

Now, all the she wants to do is to transfer her skill to others. None of three children have inherited her skill as they are too busy earning money, she said. However, she has been teaching her new embroidery technique to her house maids and employees who help take care of her batik museum.

But it appears she will get a chance to transfer her skill to others. Recently, she received an offer from the Indonesian Institute of Arts (ISI) to lecture on her new embroidery technique.

"I'm glad (about the offer), but I have not been informed yet on when I would start teaching," Dewi said.