BUTTERFLIES AND PHOENIXES

Contents
Introduction| Where Have All the Butterf lies and Phoenixes Gone? — by Iwan Tirta
|
Plying the Trade Routes — by Judi Knight-Achjadi
22
|
The Silk Road and Chinoiserie
25
|
Chinese Settlements and the Peranakan Community
27
|
Imported Chinese Labor
27
|
Return to Chinese Roots
29
|
Dress as Identity
31
|
The Kebaya
33
|
Chinese-Style Batik
|
Speaking Through Symbols — by Judi Knight-Achjadi & Asmoro Damais
55
|
The Phoenix and the Butterf ly
59
|
The Peony and the Lotus
71
|
Dragons and Snakes
71
|
Tree of Life
85
|
The Significance of Animals
85
|
The Swastika and the Diamond
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three |
Painted onto Cotton, Sewn into Silk — by Judi Knight-Achjadi & Asmoro Damais
97
|
Bridal Garments
110
|
Other Garments
129
|
Carrying-Cloths and Altar Frontals
147
|
The Handkerchief
151 |
Sarung and Kain Panjang
Introduction
Butterflies & Phoenixes
Where Have All the Butterf lies and Phoenixes Gone?
10 ≥
In 1958, while on a visit to Bali to do some research for my first book, Batik,
Pola dan Corak, I had my first encounter with butterf lies and phoenixes in the
form of an antique silk sarung of the lokcan style, that was replete with chinoiserie-derived motifs. In fact, I uncovered a number of batiks carrying the phoenix motif and a
few with butterf lies. The word lokcan is Chinese. It means ‘blue silk,’ and indeed, the silk which
came from Shantung had a bluish hue. In Indonesia, the name came to refer to the finished
batik product, which was almost always decorated with designs derived from China or chinoiserie from other countries, like Holland, England, and India.
In Bali, when I was there, this style of batik was referred to as Rembangan, implying that it had
originated in the town of Rembang on the north coast of Central Java. But, it was no longer being made, most extant examples dating back to the beginning of the 20 th century.
The Lokcan and the Revival of Silk Batik
Some years later, in the 1960s, I became obsessed with the idea of reviving the silk-batik technique, so I went to what had once been the home of some of the finest silk batik ever made,
those many towns that line Java’s north coast at the point where East and Central Java converge.
The search seemed endless, with myriad questions and many wrong addresses. I ended up in
a sleepy little town named Juana. Once upon a time, Juana had been an important inter-island
shipping entry port. By the mid-20th century, it had become a backwater town full of small
Introduction
boats stranded on sand in a silted harbor. More questions led to the workshop of Tan Kian
≤ 11
Poen. He admitted to having once made large quantities of silk batik for export to Sumatra,
mainly to the towns of Palembang and Padang. He agreed to try to reproduce an old silk
sarung from Bali on a piece of silk that I had brought along for this purpose. Six months later,
I had the reproduction in hand, and it was perfect. Mr. Tan, however, declined to continue with
the project, since his people were no longer familiar with the exceptionally difficult process for
removing wax from silk.
Butterf lies and Phoenixes
One of the reasons for my interest in lokcan batik was Mas Go Tik Swan (KPT Hardjonagoro),
who in 1954 had begun to produce batik based on the phoenix motif. This constituted his first
collection, the result of collaboration with Mrs. Bintang Soedibjo (Ibu Soed), and it was shown
to President Soekarno who was entranced.
Mas Go did not work much with butterf lies, preferring phoenixes and peonies. He raised the
lokcan batik to a higher level and produced exciting combinations in hand-drawn batik, incorporating especially the phoenix, burung hong, in his designs. Cotton skirt-wrappers, kain panjang,
with lokcan designs are still to be found in the collections left by the late Mrs. Rahmi Hatta and
her sister the late Mrs. Raharti Soebiakto, and that of the late Mrs. Hartini Soekarno,
widow of President Soekarno.
divider spread |
Kain Panjang
Region: Pekalongan
Design type: Batik Hookokai
Material: cotton, chemical dye; hand-waxed
Motifs: pairs of butterflies hovering amongst flowers
Collection: Mariana Sutandi
The Batik Hookokai was essentially a Chinese-style
batik adapted to Japanese taste during the Japanese
occupation of Indonesia from 1942–1945. It was
always divided diagonally in the pagi-sore manner, to
give the owner two skirts for the price of one, and was
exquisitely worked. The wide terang bulan border was
another feature of this batik style.
Butterflies & Phoenixes
12 ≥
Introduction
Go Tik Swan’s most famous interpretation of the phoenix was his sawunggaling (fighting cock)
≤ 13
design inspired by a gold-leafed Balinese cloth, a sketch of which was included in the book Indonesische Siermotieven by van der Hoop (1949). He also interpreted designs from Cirebon, found
in the same book and in his first collection.
Without these bold steps taken by Go Tik Swan, the batik of Java might never have evolved into
what is now known as batik Indonesia: batik that takes inspiration from everywhere and belongs
to all the people of Indonesia. His batiks reinterpreted designs from West Java, Central Java’s
north coast, and Yogyakarta, not to mention Bali, colored with a palette freely borrowed from
the chemical hues of Pekalongan, Kudus, and many other coastal cities of northern Java, in addition to the organic soga-brown of Surakarta. As for butterf lies, these beautiful creatures figured
prominently in the batik Hookokai of the Japanese era in the late 1930s and early 1940s, but by
then they had become quite European in form.
What Happened to the Phoenix?
Butterf lies and phoenixes are clear representations of Chinese inf luence in the art of batik, but
sometime at the beginning of the 20th century, they began to disappear from textile decoration.
Was it because of the equal status accorded the ‘A sian Foreigners’ with the Europeans by colonial law in 1910? It is true that of these ‘A sian Foreigners’ the Chinese began to discard many
vestiges of their original culture and adopt a more European approach to life, and this is defi-
opposite |
Kain Panjang
Material: silk; hand-waxed batik
Collection: Ardiyanto Pranata, 1995
The silk lokcan was an important batik style, treasured
by Indonesians and Sino-Indonesians in peranakan
communities in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore.
It was typified by the phoenix, often distorted, and the
carnation. This example has been divided into two halves.
On the right is the classic lokcan design, on the left a
diamond-shaped lattice filled with the banji (swastika),
a bird-on-branch, and a floral sprig.
Butterflies & Phoenixes
14 ≥
Introduction
nitely ref lected in the art of batik. Prior to that year, much of the batik produced by Chinese-
≤ 15
owned workshops had included almost the entire lexicon of Buddhist, Confucian, and Taoist
symbols as well as the butterf ly, the phoenix, stylized peonies, and a whole barn-full of mythical
animals. Later products were almost devoid of these symbols, instead featuring European-style
f loral bouquets, while butterf lies took on a European appearance and the phoenixes were replaced by swallows and storks. Brightly-colored sarungs and rectangular skirt-cloths meanwhile
supplanted the lokcan and the very Chinese altar cloths, tok wi, became increasingly rare.
By the time I made my first visit to Bali in 1958, of the lokcan only Juana export-ware sent to
Bali remained faithful to the phoenix, with the odd butterf ly. Few of those sent to Sumatra
displayed fauna, perhaps because the Muslim population was not in favor of animal depictions.
Farther inland on Java, butterf lies and phoenixes on batik were always rare, the main depiction
being a tiny phoenix enclosed in a circle. Known as peksi huk, this motif was believed to bring
luck to the wearer and was to be found more on Yogyakarta than on Surakarta batik.
Interest in the phoenix and butterf ly was revived in the early 1970s, largely the result of foreign attraction to the Kain Rembangan on Bali. The ‘good word’ soon spread to Jakarta where it
became ‘in’ with the social set as a kind of ‘shabby chic.’ Sergio dello Strologo, a UN consultant
with the Indonesian government, immediately saw the possibilities and arranged to have Sarinah Department Store, Indonesia’s first such establishment, fill its shelves with diverse, especially designed, hand-crafted items using this theme.
opposite |
Sarung (272 x 112 cm)
Type: Batik Lokcan
Region: Juana, Central Java
Material: silk, organic dye; hand-waxed
Motifs: Phoenix, carnation/tluki, butterlfy,
triangles, diamonds
Collection: Damais Family
Lokcan batik was a phenomenon of the late 19th century
when it was made solely on the north coast of Central Java.
The silk, cuan, which was often light blue in color, lok,
came from China and the designs from Chinese porcelain
and European imitations.
Butterflies & Phoenixes
16 ≥
Introduction
Starting my own batik workshop in 1972, I followed the footsteps of Mas Go, incorporating
the phoenix, as well as the butterf ly, in my repertoire. I was already producing authentic lokcan
as sarungs and stoles, then turned to the batik Hookokai, and finally, in 1979, began to produce
large wall-hangings with butterf lies and phoenixes as the focal point.
I see it as the duty of all Indonesian designers, whether working with textiles or other forms of
art and crafts, to preserve this beautiful heritage. It may originally have come from China, but
today it is an integral part of the Indonesian legacy.
— Iwan Tirta
opposite |
Kain Panjang
Material: cotton; hand-waxed batik; 1950s.
The theme of a pair of sparring birds, sawunggaling, with
long graceful tail feathers, was one of Go Tik Swan’s
(KPT Hardjonagoro’s) favorites during the early days of
the so-called Batik Nasional genre of which he was the
pioneer. The flowers are the Javanese-batik version of the
carnation, while the birds’ faces are in Balinese style.
≤ 17
Plying The Trade Routes
Butterflies & Phoenixes
Plying The Trade Routes
22 ≥
divider spread |
Kain Panjang
Material: cotton; hand-waxed batik
Collection: Mariana Sutandi
A special type of batik developed out of SinoChinese batik during World War II known as
Batik Hookokai. It was characterized by diagonal
partitioning with two different designs, extreme
detail, wide floral borders, semi-traditional
Javanese background fill-ins, and frequently,
pairs of butterflies.
The butterf ly and the phoenix began travelling the world from their home in China
through the medium of silk and porcelain, following the trade routes many hundreds of
years before the current Common Era. In many cultures, they rooted deeply, evolving
into an inseparable part of a country’s heritage. Indonesia was one such country.
Early Indonesians, the Austronesians, were sailors. In ocean-going canoes, they sailed far out
into the Pacific Ocean beginning some 5000 years ago and developed an extensive maritime
large photo of bride and groom |
For weddings until fairly recently, Sino-Indonesian
bridal couples generally reverted to Chinese costume
for the principal rites at least. Often, these were
family treasures saved for such occasions; and they
were extremely elaborate.
trading network that may have gone as far north as Japan and Korea and west into the Indian
Ocean. The contacts that ensued over the centuries, whether frequent or sporadic, resulted in
rich cross-fertilization and in many common elements in the cultures of the area.
The Silk Road and Chinoiserie
As for the Chinese, they traded either southwards by boat or north and westwards along a land
path through the Steppes that developed into the Silk Road. Since about 500 BC, concepts,
rare products, and technologies traveled the northern road all the way to Anatolia and down to
the Red Sea. Along it, Buddhism and Islam reached China, and silk and porcelain entered the
cultures of Central Asia and the Middle East. Chinese motifs found their way into Persian and
Indian textiles being traded to Indonesian peoples in the first millennium AD, into garments in
the second millennium, and into porcelain from Holland and England after the 1600s.
Chapter One | Plying The Trade Routes
≤ 23
These motifs arrived in Indonesia in an altered form known
as chinoiserie; Chinese origin is unmistakable in the ubiquitous presence of the peony, which often became confused
in iconography with the lotus and eventually the tulip, and
of the butterf ly and phoenix. Motifs and concepts following
the direct southerly route from China arrived in Indonesia in
unchanged form.
The Chinese have been coming to Indonesia’s shores since early in the Christian or Common
Era. The first visitors we have on record were itinerant Buddhist pilgrims in search of knowledge, visiting Buddhist establishments in other countries. One such person was I-Tsing, who
at the end of the seventh century spent ten years at the renowned learning center in Sriwijaya
(southern Sumatra), translating important religious texts into the Chinese language.
Chinese patronage was important to the wealth and security of early Indonesian states. Indonesian rulers were encouraged to come to China to pay their respects, or to send their embassies.
They carried with them rare products that were off-loaded in China and replaced with rich gifts
this page top & bottom |
of equal value, which greatly enhanced their reputation back home. Furthermore, the knowl-
A map showing Chinese shipping on the outer coastlines of
Southeast Asia.
edge that they had Chinese protection strengthened their defenses against potential enemies.
The phoenix arrived in many forms, but above all on the
ceramics so beloved by people all over the world.
Chapter One | Plying The Trade Routes
From time to time, the Chinese emperor would send out his own emissaries,
or even ships, to generate trade. Trading was a royal monopoly in most of Asia,
carried out under royal license, and the finest goods went into royal coffers.
Chinese Settlements and the Peranakan Community
By the year 1000 AD, immigrants were starting to trickle out of China, f leeing natural disasters and persecution. They came mostly from the southern districts where the ports were: the
provinces of Fujian and Guangdong. While the aim of the merchants was to make their fortune
then return home, most refugees had left the country illegally and could never go back. Since
women were generally forbidden to leave China, except for the few noble ladies sent as wives to
Indonesian princes, the men had no choice but to take local women to wife.
From these inter-ethnic marriages evolved, after several generations, a distinct Sino-Indonesian
culture that centuries later was to become referred to as peranakan. When the great Chinese
admiral Cheng He visited Java and Sumatra in the early 15th century, he found Chinese pirates
in power in Palembang, south Sumatra, and deeply rooted colonies of wealthy and powerful
merchant families of Chinese descent on Java’s north coast. Many were Muslims of the Hanafi
school, thus the Chinese were instrumental in bringing Islam to Indonesia. Some held important positions in the courts and were married to princesses. With their international connections
and language and trading skills, they became indispensable in the trading network.
≤ 25
Butterflies & Phoenixes
26 ≥
Chapter One | Plying The Trade Routes
Imported Chinese Labor
≤ 27
The 1700s saw a boom in world trade and a greatly increased demand for Indonesia’s rare
woods, spices, and other precious commodities. In Indonesia, the Dutch were slowly imposing
their rule, ruthlessly eliminating competition. Since they were few and the country was immense, the Dutchmen found it expedient to work through Chinese middlemen, who by now had
developed extensive trade lines into the heart of the country. Plantations of cultivable crops like
rubber, cinchona, cinnamon, tea, and coffee were established and the mining of precious metals and tin exploited, using imported Chinese labor. Whereas the earlier merchants and settlers
had been predominantly Hokkien-speakers from southern Fujian, these newcomers were mostly
Hakka-speakers from northern Guangdong. The Hokkien became concentrated in eastern
Indonesia, Central and East Java, and West Sumatra; the Hakka in West Kalimantan, various
parts of Sumatra, Bangka, Belitung, and West Java. Other sizable groups were Teo-chiu speakers who worked plantations and mines in East Sumatra, on Bangka, and on Belitung, and the
Cantonese who were employed in the tin mines on Bangka and as craftsmen in Central and East
Java, South and East Kalimantan, and central Sumatra.
Return to Chinese Roots
The ban on women leaving China was lifted at the end of the 19 th century. This means that
Chinese men in Indonesia could take Chinese wives and bring up families based on the Chinese
tradition. Immigration increased during the next few decades, bringing with it profession-
above |
Having formal photographs taken was an event looked
forward to in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
A handsome woman sits in classic pose with feet placed
neatly on a low stool and a high tea table at her elbow.
She is dressed in a batik sarung decorated with animals
of Chinese origin and flowers, a long baju panjang, and flat
embroidered slippers.
opposite |
Family photo
The Tan family gather for a photograph in front of
their elaborately decorated house in Bogor in the early 20th
century. The women are all wearing batik skirts with
short kebaya or long baju panjang, and the men, highcollared jas tutup (buttoned-up jacket) with pants
(short for boys, long for men).
28 ≥
Chapter One | Plying The Trade Routes
als and more educated Chinese, along with rising Chinese nationalism. Chinese schools and
≤ 29
organizations emerged in Indonesia, and efforts were made to bring the peranakan communities
back to Chinese cultural roots. Meanwhile, concerned about the loyalty of their Chinese
citizens in the archipelago, the Dutch opened European-oriented schools for them and in 1910
gave Netherlands citizenship to all Indies-born Chinese. It became politic to emulate the Europeans, especially in dress.
Dress as Identity
An 1872 statute compelled all people living in the Netherlands East Indies to wear their own
ethnic dress when appearing in public. For Chinese men, this was defined as the shan ku, a suit
of long, loose trousers and wide, side-opening coat, and a long pigtail of hair down the back.
For their women, who were almost all Sino-Indonesian or Indonesian, it was the batik sarung
and a knee-length, long-sleeved coat known as baju panjang, which was already in general use at
the time amongst certain classes of the population.
Since pure Chinese women were still a rarity at this stage, they were not included in the law,
and so continued to wear the shan ku made of plain dark-colored cotton for working women,
and of fine, gaily colored silks for women of wealth. At the same time, the Dutch colonials were
wearing, as informal homewear, costumes that had evolved out of Asian models. The men wore
opposite |
Baju Panjang
Collection: Damais Family
This baju panjang came from a Sino-Indonesian family in
Palembang, South Sumatra, and dates from the mid-20th
century. It is made of dotted cotton voile and embroidered
with a simple meander and a wide band of peacocks
and trees-of-life.
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a pyjama suit adopted from a combination of Indian, Chinese, and European fashions, and the
women, a batik sarung with a long-sleeved kebaya jacket whose history went back to sixteenth-
The baju panjang, which is not of Chinese origin, worn with
a batik skirt-cloth, was established as the dress for SinoIndonesian women by law in 1872, but it was also worn by
Indonesian women in a number of mainly coastal societies.
Butterflies & Phoenixes
30 ≥
Chapter One | Plying The Trade Routes
century India. Both jackets were inevitably crispy white, while the men’s pyjamas could be made
of striped Indian cotton or Javanese batik.
≤ 31
Chinese men in Indonesia sometimes wore batik pyjama pants, as well. In the late 1950s, Chinese men were still to be seen at work in their shops dressed in the dark-colored ku (pants) or
striped-pyjama pants, torsos naked or covered with a singlet, while their women wore either the
shan ku, now shaped to fit the body and made in printed cotton materials, or the sarung-kebaya.
The Kebaya
White, to the Chinese, has always been the color of bereavement, so while the Dutch kebaya
was all-white, the Sino-Indonesian version was soon enlivened with colorfully embroidered
edgings of butterf lies, birds with elegantly trailing tail-feathers, graceful peonies and orchids,
and even spiders, kittens, and bunnies, and was eventually made of colored fabrics. Underneath
the thin blouses, they wore chemises, kutang, of diverse colors and embroidered designs. Thus,
when doing hot work at home, they could discard the kebaya and still be decently clothed.
When dressing up, they would add a solid gold or silver belt that glimmered richly through the
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blouse and a pair of delicately embroidered slippers. Small cash was carried in a pocket in the
kutang until purses came into fashion in modern times.
Local Indonesian women in more urbanized societies, meanwhile, turned increasingly to the
kebaya to cover their shoulders when out of the house. Owing to a Dutch insistence on housemaids wearing plain white cotton kebaya, and to certain local cosmological perceptions per-
Kebayas were fastened by ornate and valuable pins, often in
a set of three linked by chains.
Collection: Damais Family
opposite |
Three beauties from Medan in embroidered kebayas and
their cousin in modern attire.
Butterflies & Phoenixes
32 ≥
taining to white, the preference in this group was for colorfully printed fabrics, and amongst
the aristocracy, rich velvets and brocades. Many bound their hair in knots very similar to those
≤ 33
worn by Chinese women and wore Chinese slippers.
Chinese-Style Batik
All three peoples (Sino-Indonesians, Dutch, and Indonesians) had a great deal of respect
for fine batik and their own specific tastes. Sino-Indonesian women liked gaily-colored designs
of Chinese and Javanese origin that were replete with symbolism. Dutch women opted for tastefully colored f loral bouquets, scenes from favorite tales, and exotic animals hidden in
luxurious foliage. The main Indonesian users were the Javanese who wore the style traditional
to their home districts, the designs frequently geometric and highly symbolic, the colors generally somber. Chinese involvement in the making of batik since at least the middle of the nineteenth century combined with Chinese usage resulted in tremendously escalating production up
to World War II, and reinforced the assimilation of Chinese-derived motifs and designs
into the batik vocabulary.
By 1910, the Dutch had largely abandoned ‘native’ dress, which was now considered by them to
be inappropriate, while Sino-Indonesian women had largely relinquished their baju panjang for
the sarung-kebaya, which they continued to wear into the 1950s. Pure Chinese women, who began to arrive in large numbers at the beginning of the twentieth century, wore Chinese clothing
at first, then switched directly to Western dress, as did the Chinese men.
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Scenic batik with a large and graceful bird amongst
water plants was popular in the second quarter of the 20th
century. By this time, too, the kebaya encim of the SinoIndonesian community had become quite ornate, with
long lacy points in front. Oey Kin Nio, 1940.
opposite |
Since reintroduction to the Jakarta fashion scene in the
early 1970s by Asmoro Damais, old kebayas and sarungs
are often featured in today’s magazines. Here Ratih
Sanggar poses for “Femina” in an elegant outfit.
≤ 39
The designs embroidered into the Sino-Indonesian
kebaya borders could be grandly floral, simply scalloped,
or filled with lively animals, such as flying birds, spiders,
playful rabbits or kittens, prawns, ducks at the pond,
crabs, and butterflies, among others, all of which had
a symbolic significance related to happiness, long life,
wealth, and protection.
≤ 41
Butterflies & Phoenixes
42 ≥
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Kutang with peacocks
Material: cotton, plastic buttons, silk thread;
machine-embroidered
Motifs: Chinese script for conjugal
happiness, peacock, flora
Collection: Damais Family
One-piece bodice without pocket.
Kutang with dragon
Material: cotton, pastic buttons, silk
thread; machine-embroidered
Motifs: dragon, magic pearl, flower
Collection: Damais Family
A three-piece bodice with pocket. Women wore a
bodice or kutang under their kebaya. Sino-Indonesian
women decorated theirs with colorful embroidery.
Chapter One | Plying The Trade Routes
≤ 43
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Kutang with Peony
Material: cotton, plastic buttons
Motifs: peony and plum blossoms
Multi-pieced bodice without pocket.
Kutang with floral design
Material: cotton
Motifs: flowers
Collection: Damais Family
Design composed of folded strips of cloth set into cut-out
areas. Multi-pieced bodice without pocket.
Butterflies & Phoenixes
44 ≥
above |
A young Sino-Indonesian woman in daily dress
early in the 20th century: a kebaya and batik
sarung, flat embroidered slippers, and long bead
necklaces of gold and jade.
above |
Slipper faces
Material: Glass beads on pink velvet
Motif: plum blossom
Collection: N.S.Djoemena
Slipper faces were embroidered on a sheet of cloth faced
with strong cotton, and then sent to the cobbler who would
turn them into slippers. The embroidery could be worked
with silk thread, gold metallic thread, or beads.
Chapter One | Plying The Trade Routes
≤ 45
above |
Slippers
The kain-kebaya costume of Sino-Indonesian women
required the use of slippers. At first these were flat, but by
the 1930s they were high-heeled. The fashion was copied in
Central Javanese court dress. While the Sino-Indonesian
slippers were made in a multitude of ways (gold-thread
embroidery on the far left, silk-and-bead embroidery in the
middle and far right) and replete with symolic motifs, those
in the palaces were made of gold-embroidered velvet and
carried floral designs.
Butterflies & Phoenixes
46 ≥
Butterflies & Phoenixes
48 ≥
Chapter One | Plying The Trade Routes
≤ 49
this page right |
Selendang, Shoulder-Cloth
Material: cotton, chemical dye; hand-waxed batik
Motifs: pheasant, chrysanthemum & other flowers,
butterfly, drawn fringe .
this page far right |
Selendang, Shoulder-Cloth (206 cm x 52 cm)
Type: Batik Tiga Negeri
Material: cotton; hand-waxed batik
Motifs: chrysanthemum bouquet, peacock, spidery plant,
tendrils, diagonal waves, diamond, arched triangle
Collection: Damais Family .
opposite |
Kain Panjang (267 cm x 107 cm)
Region: Cirebon
Material: cotton, chemical dye; hand-waxed batik
Motifs: royal pleasure garden, deer, trees, palms, house,
rock formations resembling a fish-tailed woman & a lion,
butterfly & other insects .
The pleasure garden was an important part of palace landscape.
It was a place for fun and relaxation and for meditation, usually
in a small building or cave in the center of the garden-universe.
The Chinese influence is very strong in all forms of Cirebon art.