Another Classical Approach on Batik Tulungagung

Here some pictures with batik from batikker group of Mas Bobby Satriyo of "Batik Liris Manis Majan"  (you might see him on Facebook under that name). It has kain panjang format, and in pagi-sore-section. 
The color seem unusual since it has greenish tinge.but everything's within the recognizable gajah modo color scheme. 

The left section is the garland (loosely pictured buketan) while the right section is mythical bird of paradise against diagonal stripes of various isen-isen like ukel, beras wutah, kricak, parang etc (you might find these patterns under different names all over the places, due to the local dialect or different interpretation of the same pictures). 

The Classic Approach on Tulungagung Batik

Sometimes you just blown away with something so classic you feels instant connection to it. Classic batiks for the most indonesian was part of their memory of younger era of themselves. Mom went to formal function with neatly tucked hip-wrapper batik sogan, Pop being dress-up in long-sleeve, their baby borother's sling batik craddle, image of their night blanket, etc. 
And so is this one, well, in some extent...
A piece of batik classic Tulungagung in Majan Gajah Mada style, by mbak Yunar. 
It's classic, with known color scheme of 5, blue, black, yelllow, green , and of course , sogan brown and traditional process. I means that the first step was to start with darkest color of blue to make outlines of design, and then boil it down to rid off the first waxing process. It means more time and resources. And automatically , more expensive batik. 
As you notice from detailed pics, the outline's not even a line. It consist of tiny white dots within a dark blue portion. rows of dots like boats on the river. More time-consuming process to get through.... 

You have to notice that it isnt evenly designed through out the body. there's square that has different pattern from adjacent area. It is called tumpal, special portion in a sarong that indicate special area to wear in front or behind the body. 








Design of the body follow the classic lereng, family of diagonal-oriented design, called "Udan Liris" , or "gentle rain" dpicting variety of different stripes of patterns, always odd in number. The larger motif is bird of paradise, symbol of great beauty and personality.

Here and there we could recognize fans, proof for oriental influence. Overall, this design follow those of Central Java "Sudagaran" , classic pattern of either Sultanate of Yogyakarta or Surakarta, but added with merchant-class more personal flavor. 

     

Feeling Nostalgic : my First PiecesBt

Well, it was when we started a while ago, we , that means me and the Pamekasan creative teams, producing couple of batik that were fine in quality and can be bit pricey at the time. 
Looking at the quality now, it's good. 

This one, the burgundy-maroon background batik ws from around 4 years ago. As we can see it was depicting bouquet, "buketan" they said in local dialect. 
The key to understanding a piece of Pamekasan Batik is to look at the background. It always busy, just like "semarangan" did. It was and still believe that fine quality batik should be 'busy' at the background 
By the way, if you see the background leaves, it contains 3 different color, white, yellow and red/burgundy. 
And you know from this fact that it took 3 times process of exposing one-third of leaves to chemical dye, while the latter was closed by some fine wax to prevent penetration of unwanted piece. 

Silky Feeling : Another batch of Luxury

Well, i'd posted second batch of our silk stock, and here they are.
Btw, some of them were posted in my facebook account ; wahyu subiyantoro; , and perhaps if you have a crush on them, and if they're still available, you could buy them. Just contact me and i'll see if they're still there (well, half of them are in my house, another is in Royal Plaza Outlet).
And oh yeah : these are buckels that also available in our outlets, in case our customer want the total (ethnic) look. 
It's hand-made buckle in burned-finished copper. Pretty arent they....

 

Silky Feeling : those luxurious fabric around your hips

It's kind of funny on how one marketing strategy can helps sales tremendeously. Well, not that dramatic, of course. But you get the idea. 
The batik tulis ( hand-drawn batik) on silk is something deemed not very popular these days since it usually connected to the old-fashion feeling, more mature silk-shirt father (or even grandfather) kind of thing. Not cool. And quite expensive.
That's too bad since silk batik was and still something i find rather alluring, on how come someone rejected the idea of added luxury into your otherwise everyday clothes ensemble. 

Well, in our store, for months we tried to sell those hand-drawn batik on silk with not-so-encouraging result. And then i saw friends use more affordable viscose stamp-batik for hip wrapper, beach-style but this time, topped with embroidered traditional cotton blouse (we called Kebaya) for informal function (and sometimes in more elaborate functions as well). 
And we starts to sell , marketing our hand-drawn silk batik as luxurious alternative of beach hip wrapper. 
And people buy to the idea.
Well, at least we can help our friends specialized in producing silk-based hand-drawn batik in Pamekasan, while aso producing healthy profit (not much, but healthy). 
And i can find a good excuse to buy more of it (cannot help myself, they're gorgeous)

Here are some of our h

and-drawn Pamekasan style silk-based batik of our own.