Yogyakarta, Solo, Pekalongan: three batik styles

Batik is made all over Java, and the regional styles are distinct enough that a practised eye places a cloth within fifty kilometres. The quickest tell is usually the background.

Yogyakarta — white ground

Yogya batik traditionally leaves the background white, with motifs in indigo and soga brown on top. The result is high contrast and visibly geometric: parang, kawung, nitik. There is a formality to it that comes straight from the Kraton, which regulated these patterns for centuries.

If a classical cloth reads as crisp, dark-on-white and strongly ordered, it is probably Yogya.

Surakarta (Solo) — soga ground

Sixty kilometres away, the same motif family is drawn on a cream or soga-brown ground instead. The overall effect is warmer and softer, and the contrast is lower.

The two courts split in 1755 and their batik traditions split with them, which is why two cities this close have palettes you can tell apart across a room.

Pekalongan and the north coast — colour

The pesisir or coastal styles are a different world. Pekalongan, Cirebon and Lasem sat on trade routes, and it shows: Chinese phoenixes, Dutch bouquets, Arabic calligraphy, Japanese motifs from the occupation years.

Coastal batik is floral, asymmetric and brightly coloured — pinks, greens, reds that the inland courts never used. Cirebon's megamendung, the layered storm-cloud motif in graded blue, is probably the single most recognisable batik design in the world.

Lasem — the red

Worth singling out. Lasem on the north-east coast was known for a specific deep red, abang getih pitik — "chicken-blood red" — which local makers attributed to the minerals in the town's water. Antique Lasem pieces are still collected for that colour alone.

So which is this studio?

Yogyakarta, in a city that has made batik for the Kraton for centuries and where the old batik quarter, Kauman, is still a walkable neighbourhood of studios.

That said, what you make here will most likely be bright and coastal in spirit — because given a free choice of colour, almost nobody picks brown.