Malaysia Textile Craft Industry: Innovation Inspired by Bamboo for Batik Block Contemporary Design

Abstract

Block Batik in batik industry has been practised in Malaysia since 1920s. It also known as “Batik Cop” or “Batik Terap”. The block for stamping or “Sarang Batik” normally made from steel with variety design on the surface of it. The beauty of the block batik pattern designs depend on the fineness and creativity of the motifs designed that engraved on the surface of the block by the expertise of the engraver. Therefore the objective of the study is to produce new design for block batik used from natural sources which is bamboo as a block to stamp the design for batik. The study emphasized on the uses of bamboo sticks cutted from bamboo tree sections as a block to create new geometric and spontaneous design for block batik design. Bamboo is one of the tropical resources in Malaysia. The light weight of the bamboo sticks alternatively can reduce the consequences towards the practitioners rather than using block made from steel which is more heavy than bamboo. The structure on the bamboo vascular cross sections scattered around the trunk create circular motif, dots and dotted lines. The uniqueness of the motif and pattern using bamboo as a block depends on the creativity in manipulating the structure of the bamboo with stamping techniques and the application of wax and the color techniques. A variety of designs such as overall repetition, vertical stripes and horizontal stripes as well as color overlays and tones highlight the creativity of the batik design. Such designs can be featured in the market especially for production of handicraft products, interior decoration and clothing design. Therefore, this study significantly gives an ideas and inspiration for batik entrepreneurs in producing block batik by using bamboo as new natural based batik design at a lower-cost.