Why designer batik is becoming the next investment asset

The fabric that Singapore's fashion community associates with designer Ong Shunmugam and the international crowd with Nelson Mandela recently became a luxury asset.

Alta, Asia's largest digital asset marketplace, has partnered with renowned batik label Iwan Tirta Private Collection to release 100 new security tokens backed by hand-drawn batik wall hangings. These tokens have a maturity term of five years.

"Each piece of the batik wall hanging is unique, executed by the artisans of Iwan Tirta Private Collection," says Alta co-founder Benjamin Twoon. "On top of getting the artwork at the end of the term, investors also get exclusive rights to the design, which further enhances the exclusivity of the asset." In the meantime, they can trade the tokens on the exchange.

It took a while, but batik has finally come into its own as a luxury asset. Five decades ago, batik advocates struggled to get most Asians to don the fabric with pride, even as it was featured in European haute couture collections. Today, batik is becoming hip again and Asian design houses are increasingly embracing the textile and its rich history of motifs.

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The use of wax to create patterns in dyed cloth has been practised since ancient times, but it is in Indonesia, in particular the island of Java, that the technique has been refined to a complex art form. The word batik came from the Javanese words for "wide" (amba) and "dot" (titik), after the painstaking process of dotting intricate patterns in wax on a wide textile panel.

Creating a piece of batik is intensively manual and requires precise craftsmanship. In 1925, an American traveller by the name of Daniel Edward Lorenz wrote during his sojourn to Java: "It is in this country that one should purchase Batik if intending to buy it at all, for its manufacture is peculiar to this tropical Island. The patient Javanese woman has been making it for centuries. Briefly, this process consists of drawing designs in hot wax on white cotton cloth, colouring the unwaxed portions of the cloth by dipping it again and again into vats of different coloured dyes, each colour requiring a new wax process. Skilled and artistic workers produce elaborate and beautiful designs, the choicest of which are autographed by the maker and, of course, command much higher prices than the ordinary work…A woman must squat on her mat before her easel for twenty days to do the wax painting of an intricate design, working twelve hours a day."

Because of the immense effort behind every work, for centuries, wearing batik was largely the privilege of Javanese royals and aristocrats. By the 1800s, however, European traders had successfully established batik as a commodity and factories were set up in Europe to mass produce imitation batik.

Stamp printing was introduced, which enabled batik production to scale up and speed up. Textile magazines in the West featured articles on the fabric and by the 1930s, batik motifs were adapted and used in Western art, fashion, and even as decorative inlays in European furniture.

The onset of war and subsequent turmoil of the post-colonial years threw the industry off-course. Batik workshops shuttered and artisans ceased their practice. In the meantime, with the overarching desire to modernise and catch up with the West, Indonesians began shunning their traditions, batik included. Prajudi Admodirdjo, one of Indonesia's pioneering fashion designers, once lamented: "I was ashamed to see kain ikat (a traditional Indonesian woven textile) being used for clothes in European fashion shows when no one in Jakarta wears it."

The late 1950s saw a gradual reversal in batik's fortunes. In the forging of a new national identity, President Sukarno urged Indonesians to look to their traditions. Tourism, industry promotion, and nationalism pushed batik once again onto the world stage, though in the form of mass-printed cloth with batik motifs. By the 1960s, batik print wear had become all the rage in beaches across Australia and California.

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Getting batik popularised on home ground proved more uphill. Even more so when it came to hand-drawn pieces, instead of the cheap mass-printed cloth passed off as batik. Against such a backdrop, champions of batik, such as Sarkasi Said and Iwan Tirta, emerged. Perhaps more than any others in contemporary history, it was Tirta, a Yale University law graduate, who catapulted batik from casual wear to international high fashion and restored local pride in the craft.

Tirta discovered his passion for batik after researching it at the British Museum and began documenting it extensively across Indonesia when he returned from New York. In 1962, he published his first book on batik. Eight years later, he gave up his law profession to set up his workshop, expanding to 600 workers by the early 1980s.

In a 1983 interview, Tirta said: "My aim is to educate everyone in the beauty of batik. We do not promote enough top quality batik because we fear people will not buy them because of high prices. It, therefore, becomes a vicious circle. If people will not buy high-quality batik, then no one will want to make them. As some of the old patterns are very intricate, after a while people will forget them."

Drawing from the database of motifs he had collected, Tirta designed original motifs, experimenting with batik on silk and wool and translating them into modern wear. His work, which stood out for its bold interpretation of batik blending Indonesian sensibilities with European aesthetics, caught the attention of European fashion designers, international magazines, and the Indonesian government, which began commissioning Tirta to design tailor-made shirts for visiting dignitaries such as Ronald Reagan.

Tirta's batik wall hangings became sought after and five-star hotels commissioned him to furnish their rooms with hand-drawn batik. In an interview, Tirta mused: "People thought I was mad to use batik to decorate hotels. But now it's no longer strange to do so. Batik gives them the character and atmosphere of this country."

The 1990s was when batik truly came of age. Haute fashion and Tirta's collaboration with the likes of French designer Emmanuel Ungaro were all very fine, but when it came to diplomatic meetings, the suit continued to prevail.

This changed with Nelson Mandela, who picked up his first batik shirt while visiting Jakarta in 1990 and went on to own several Iwan Tirta shirts. Mandela insisted on wearing batik to the United Nations and meetings with heads of state, blazing the trail for batik as formal wear fit for diplomatic circles.

The 1994 APEC meeting held in Bogor was a statement of confidence in the fabric — all the dignitaries, including Bill Clinton, were dressed in batik shirts specially designed and tailor-made by Tirta.

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Batik collectors tend to be a discreet lot. Toko Aljunied, one of the first batik specialist shops established in Singapore, services such connoisseurs. Despite the established value of batik among collectors — a hand-drawn piece bought for a few hundred dollars some years ago could fetch over a thousand now — general awareness and knowledge of batik's worth is still somewhat lacking locally. Now and then, Toko Aljunied encounters families who bring old batik pieces belonging to their grandparents, with the request to tailor them into bespoke clothes.

"We would appraise these pieces and advise the family on which ones are too valuable to cut up and should be kept as heirlooms, and which pieces are suitable to be turned into tailored clothes or shirts," says Syed Mohamad bin Junied Aljunied, whose family has been running the shop since 1940, and counts politicians and the business elite of Singapore and countries in the region among its clients, including the Prime Minister of Singapore, who would send his tailor to choose specially hand-drawn batik on silk to be tailored as shirts.

On the international stage, batik tulis’ value is clearly waxing. Besides regular appearances at Christie's and Sotheby's, batik has also carved a space for itself in the world of fashion, its motifs inspiring new designers such as Dries Van Noten and Diane von Furstenberg. Batik labels such as Iwan Tirta Private Collection continue to push the boundaries of batik in design. Recently, the label worked with Vespa to incorporate batik motifs into a special edition of the iconic scooter.

Tirta would have been proud.

Taking 20 days to complete a batik piece may have impressed traveller Daniel Lorenz. But in reality, more complex pieces of hand-drawn batik, called batik tulis, can take six to eight months to complete.

The creation of batik tulis demands painstaking artisanship. For example, to achieve long, unbroken lines in certain motifs, artisans need to hold their breath during the execution as the slight tremors brought on by breathing may cause imperfections in the drawing. Batik pieces with white backgrounds are also known to be among the most challenging to create, as the smallest oversight or mistake in the waxing and dyeing process could stain the white portions and ruin the piece.

The intense craftsmanship that goes into batik tulis means that every piece is unique, even when it is a recreation of a traditional design. This is also the rationale for its value. Vintage and antique batik tulis have fetched upwards of US$10,000 under the hammer. New hand-drawn batik from established labels such as Pekalongan workshop Oey Soe Tjoen start at around 20 million rupiah (S$1,780) — and the waiting list is as long as five years.

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The word "batik" evokes a world of its own, from the artisan's meticulous dotting and labour of love to the motifs intricately traced in wax. These motifs are laden with symbolism and history, from their roots in specific regions, folklore and worldviews, and historical periods of Indonesia, to their roles in representing the status of their wearers. The latter aspect was observed in one of the earliest known English descriptions of batik, written in 1817 by Sir Stamford Raffles in his tome History of Java: "Of the several kinds of coloured cottons and silks there is a very great diversity of patterns, particularly of the batik, of which not less than hundred are distinguished by their appropriate names. Among these are the patterns exclusively worn by the sovereign, termed batik parang rusa and batik sawat…"

For example, batik parang rusak, which depicts interlocking S-shaped braids believed to be inspired by unending ocean waves, was once reserved for royalty. The distinctive floral motifs known as batik buketan were developed at the end of the 19th century by European women living in the Dutch East Indies, who had opened their own batik workshops and infused the European love for botany in a new form of batik called batik belanda (Dutch batik).

Even as batik is increasingly adapted for modern use, the symbolism of traditional motifs remains a consideration. In a 2022 tie-up between Korean fashion designer Kim Seo Ryong, known for dressing K-Pop stars, and Iwan Tirta Private Collection, Kim worked with the label's hand-drawn batik pieces to create a collection of resort wear. In designing the collection, Kim had to take extra care to position and orient some of the motifs in a way that respect their sacredness.

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