Ceylon Batik

Batik is a way of decorating cloth with wax and dye. The Sri Lanka Export Development Board explains that the word is Javanese and originally meant writing with wax. A pattern is made on the cloth in wax, and the rest of the cloth is then coloured, leaving a design of coloured and uncoloured areas. The Board describes the work as painstaking and slow.

A 2021 study by the Central Bank of Sri Lanka sets out the steps. The design is drawn, stored and traced. Wax is heated and applied with tools. The cloth is dyed with natural or chemical dyes. The wax is then removed with heated water, and the waste water is cleaned. The Export Development Board notes that Sri Lankan batik clothing is made in silk and cotton.

The Export Development Board states that batik originated in Indonesia and was spread across East Asia by Dutch colonial officers. It says the Dutch introduced the craft to Sri Lanka, and dates this to the turn of the 19th century.

According to the Board, batik was at first a pastime of the elite of the Kandyan court, and the aristocratic ladies of the central kingdom were skilled in it. The skill then passed to the artisan classes, who used batik cloth for tapestries, regional flags and the traditional dress of the aristocracy.

The Central Bank takes a narrower view of the industry's age. It contrasts handloom weaving, which it says has been practised in Sri Lanka for over 2,500 years, with a batik industry that it describes as young and as having begun in the 1970s.

Batik remained a cottage industry until the late 1970s. The Export Development Board links the change to the growth of tourism, which brought a sudden rise in demand for local handicrafts. For some time batik was sold mainly to visitors, through outlets in tourist areas and hotels along the coast.

State bodies supported the craft. A University of Moratuwa researcher records that Laksala, the state handicraft outlet established in 1964, supported makers of batik among other crafts. The Export Development Board credits the National Crafts Council, the Sri Lanka Handicrafts Board, the Institute of Textiles and Apparel and its own work with encouraging a generation of batik artists to try new forms and techniques.

Batik was also used in buildings. The Central Bank study illustrates a ceiling of batik panels at a hotel in Bentota, first made in 1967 by Ena de Silva and Geoffrey Bawa and reproduced in 1994 by the same craftspeople.

The Export Development Board describes present-day batik as largely the work of village-based women, joined by a newer group of designers. Beyond clothing, makers produce lamp shades, linen, tapestries and upholstery. The Board's 2012 report on the craft sector lists batik as made island wide rather than in one cluster.

The Central Bank study of 2021 notes that Sri Lankan makers have kept to waxed batik rather than the block-printed kinds available from India and Bangladesh. It records that a new HS code has recently been introduced in Sri Lanka for handlooms and batiks, and it refers to a State Ministry of Batik, Handloom Fabric and Local Apparel Products. Among the barriers it lists are the ageing of craftspeople and the exit of younger generations. The National Crafts Council includes batik wall hangings as a category in its published craft awards.