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the canting

The canting: the tiny copper pen behind hand-drawn batik

A single hand-drawn batik cloth can take months, and every line comes out of a tiny copper spout.

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The real story

In batik tulis, the maker fills a canting with hot wax and draws on cotton, gently blowing on the spout so the wax flows evenly. The wax resists the dye: dip the cloth, and the waxed lines stay pale. For several colours, the cloth is waxed, dyed and dried again and again, and at the end it is boiled so the wax melts away (called 'nglorod'). Stamped batik, using copper blocks called 'cap', came later and is much faster.

Some motifs carried rules. Certain parang patterns, for example, were once reserved for the royal courts of Yogyakarta and Surakarta. On 2 October 2009, UNESCO inscribed Indonesian batik on its list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, and Indonesia made 2 October National Batik Day. Offices and schools across the country wear batik on that day.

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The facts we checked

  • A canting is a small copper vessel with a spout on a bamboo handle, used to draw hot wax onto cloth (batik tulis)
  • One hand-drawn batik cloth can take weeks or months
  • UNESCO inscribed Indonesian batik on 2 October 2009; Indonesia celebrates National Batik Day every 2 October

Sources

We checked every number and date on screen before the video was made.

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