We went to Jogja by car and took the pantura road. Pantura is short for pantai utara (north coast). The track was so awful because of the traffic. A side there was an accident of truck crashed, there were also lots of stopping because of roadwork, bridge repairing and asphalting. They are preparing for the mudik tradition on Eid feast day. Mudik is when people travel from big city like Jakarta back to their kampung to visit family just like family gathering on Christmas day.
First day, I visited a batik workshop “Batik Winotosastro” that is owned by a family of my friend for generations. As I enter the building, they have a batik shop on the front area and I was greeted by the shop manager or the front officer. I told her directly that I was interested to have a tour to their workshop. She led me to the back of the building and transformed in to a tour guide. She explained everything very well. They produces batik in 3 types: batik tulis (hand write batik), cap (stamp), and the combination of those two.
First step for batik tulis, to draw a motive on a material (cotton or silk) by tracing a model underneath the cloth. And draw the second time with wax using canting. And for batik cap, the first step is directly use the stamp with wax to the material. Using the stamp might be faster, but the trick is you need to be careful and make sure the motive on the stamp didn’t go overlapping or discontinue. It has to be precise from the last end meet the first motive of the stamp.
The wax that got off from the material in a hot water will be reuse. The waste of the workshop will be checked and will be processed until it reaches pH 7 then it is safe for disposal.