Bali

Rene and Tracy in Bali

Bali is probably the best known of the 17,500 islands in the Indonesian archipelago to Westerners. Bali is known for its beautiful beaches, wonderful climate, friendly people AND to fiber people for its lovely textiles. Rene Derewetzky (Tall Pines guild member) has been living in Jakarta for the last 3 ½ years, during that time she has accumulated both a lovely collection and knowledge of Indonesian textiles. Unfortunately for me Rene and her family are being repatriated back to Houston in December. As a last hurrah Rene offered to go with me to Bali and take me around to see Balinese textiles. I jumped at the offer and met Rene in late October in Bali. It was lovely to go on a trip where you just show up and everything is arranged.

From the airport we went straight to a nearby shop in Denpassar that had Balinese batik yardage in cotton and rayon for $2.00 a meter! Balinese batik is very tropical, bright colors, large motifs, not nearly as intricate as other Indonesian batiks, but fun stuff! Upstairs they had a nice collection of older Javanese textiles, mostly large pieces (Hinggi) that were warp ikat and supplementary weft. It was a great way to start the trip.

Wall of brightly colored cotton batik

Our next stop was Sanur, a town that was much quieter, less kitchy touristy shops, more for the middle-aged tourist. We stopped at a shop called Nogo. Nogo specializes in weft ikat fine cotton clothing, be still my heart! You can buy off the rack or custom order pieces. I got a dress, top and skirt custom made for $150 (out of weft ikat!). We picked my items up 3 days later and they fit perfectly!

Our first night we stayed in Kuta and enjoyed a lovely fresh fish dinner on the beach. Kuta is where tourism in Bali got started, there is a lot of traffic, lots of shops with touristy stuff for sale, it is where the younger tourists looking for night life stay.

The next morning we headed toward Ubud. Ubud is a town where a lot of artisans have settled, it too has a large tourism industry but it still maintains a more low keyed feeling, like I expect Bali was years ago. Our first stop in Ubud was at Threads of Life Indonesian Textile Center. WOW, what a neat place. From their brochure: “Threads of Life commissions textile weavers, basket makers and other traditional artists across Indonesia to recover the skills of their ancestors, working to an exquisite standard usually only seen in museums. Since 1998 we have sponsored the weaving of traditional, handmade, natural-dyed textiles, baskets and crafts that often take years to complete. We work directly with the artists, helping them establish cooperatives that build their financial security.” The shop is small but it is packed with beautiful work for sale and displays demonstrating the different techniques used to create the textiles. When you buy a piece you receive a photo of the artisan who made the piece and a DVD with a PowerPoint slide show of that area’s people and their work. It was wonderful to see how much Threads of Life is doing to educate people about the wonderful textiles of Indonesia.

Threads of Life, display of tied warps for ikat. Notice the naturally dyed
 skeins hanging in the background.

On day 3 we headed out to visit a couple of villages to see weavers in action. Driving east out of Ubud we saw the beautiful countryside with lovely terraced rice fields. Our first stop was in the village of Tenganan where the famous double-ikat cloth called geringsing is produced. Each step of the process is done by a different person; spinning the yarn, winding the warp/weft, tying the resist ties and weaving the cloth. It is a very time consuming process, the finished fabric is used for rituals and only worn and produced by the people of Tenganan. While there a tour guide came through with 2 Singaporean ladies who work for the Singapore Heritage Conservation Centre, turns out the guide (Lolet) is one of the owners of Threads of Life and gives tours (I got his card) throughout Bali and Indonesia.

Selection of finished double-ikat (geringsing).  I purchased one of the smaller pieces. The colors are traditional and are all naturally dyed. 

Winding the weft for double-ikat

Our next stop was the mountain village of Seraya. The ladies at Threads of Life suggested we go there when I asked about the black and white checked fabric I saw on the statues all over Bali. Seraya is the only place that still produces this fabric as it was originally made; handspun cotton, hand-dyed with indigo and over-dyed with brown to get black, then handwoven. The fabric now used on the statues is a printed check and the handwoven fabric is worn by the men for ceremonies. We went to the “Natural Dyers’ & Weavers’ Cooperative of Seraya Traditional Textile Artisan”. We were greeted by Wayan Karya head of the cooperative. Wayan was a delightful guide, he showed us the dye plants, demonstrated how they dyes work, showed us where they grow their cotton, his mother demonstrated spinning the cotton and then we saw a weaving demonstration. There were a group of ladies working in the cotton field, they grinned and giggled when they saw us. Turns out they don’t get a lot of Western visitors and they were amazed by our whiteness! As we climbed the mountain on narrow dirt roads I questioned whether we should have made this trip, in the end it was the highlight of my trip to Bali. AND I added a couple of pieces from the Cooperative to my ever growing collection!

Wayan demonstrating how the root of the Mengkudo reacts with the mordant (macadamia nut)  to give a nice red dye. Other colors they dye are Indigo/blue, Tumeric/yellow and then a leaf  which gives then brown which they use to over-dye their  indigo dyed yarn  to get the lovely black they use in their checked pieces. 

Indigo pots, aren't they lovely. Notice skeined yarn hanging from the rafters.

Wayan's mother demonstrating spinning their homegrown cotton. 
Interesting wheel. 

On returning to Ubud we finished up our trip with one more visit to Threads of Life, thanking them for their excellent recommendations on places to visit and purchasing a few more pieces for our collections. Next time I’ll add the village where they produce Songket (supplementary weft with metallic thread) to my itinerary!

Tracy and Wayan modeling the different textiles his cooperative produces. The black and white check is the only fabric they make using their handspun cotton.  All of the cloth is dyed using their own natural dye plants.  Pretty amazing!