Batik from Madura

In Madura in the early years of the twentieth century, several methods were used to produce different colours used in batik, but in general cloths fell into one of two types. One was similar to the colour scheme of Central Javanese court styles (deep blue, brown and cream or white) while the other resembled the brighter and more varied styles of the north coast of Java. In Madura, this second type was famous for a fiery red produced from a mixture of the bark of the mengkudu tree, a mordant obtained from jirak, and the brown dye known as soga. Although this dye mixture was also used in parts of Java, in Madura a different technique was used and this resulted in a rich ruddy colour which is nowadays achieved with chemical dyes. Some Madurese batik makers were very skilled, and could rival the batik makers of Java in their intricate and delicate work. Madura still produces very fine batik, especially from the Tanjungbumi district.

One of the characteristics of Madurese batik is the range of filling designs, or guri. Very often a Madurese cloth will have a number of different filling designs, contained in circles or other shapes. Where one filling design is dominant it will be this, rather than the foreground motif, which gives the cloth design its name. In Madura, grandparents present their children with a special baby-carrying cloth, or ban-ban, on the occasion of the birth of a grandchild. The distinctive design of these cloths os reminiscent of Kashmiri shawls, with panels at each end containing koni motifs, known in Britain as the paisley motif 2007.64.