A Good and Large Vintage Indonesian Batik "Painting"

Batik is one of many methodologies of fabric decoration employed in Indonesia's long and rich textile tradition. Those unfamiliar with the process will not immediately recognize how the designs are rendered, but it is essentially a wax-resist type of dyeing operation where certain sections of a textile are pigmented while others are tied-off and shielded from coloring. The process is repeated over and over again by section and by color until the design has been completed. For lack of a better comparison, the closest analogy we can think of is a combination of silk screening and American style tie-dye, though we suspect the Indonesians might cringe at that comparison. Most typically, they create batik designs in various geometric motifs that have certain symbolism and convey status within Indonesian society, but now too they use batik methods to achieve what in essence are paintings on fabric. Creating “paintings” like this using the batik method is an extremely complicated and labor intensive process: The amount of work that goes into a piece like this is probably not fully appreciated by those unfamiliar with its method of creation, but as with Burmese lacquerware, the more colors, the more complicated and involved the process.

Size and Condition: Framed dimensions are 60 inches wide, 44 inches tall. Unframed dimensions are 48 inches wide, 34 inches tall. There is a thread pull in the left arm of the central character along with some minor soiling nearby, but despite this overall condition is excellent. The vertical whitish lines on the left side of the image are a visual disturbance caused by camera flash, and are not damage.