Bangkok-born, London-based textile designer Lisa King always knew her Indonesian mother was an avid collector, from kimonos to Japanese crockery and furniture. But after spending six years sorting through her prized possessions following her death, she discovered there was one more surprise. “Last January, the warehouse that was storing some of her stuff was like, ‘Oh, we forgot about this container’ and it was 100 boxes of southeast Asian textiles,” King recounts over the phone. “And I was like, ‘Oh my god, mum.’ This is so typical of my Asian mother.”
The timing was apt, as King had recently begun incorporating batik—the Indonesian art of using wax to dye textiles and create prints—into her own work. “Suddenly, I’d been given this archive—what do I do with it? Am I allowed to cut these things up?” the designer says of the 500-odd piece batik collection, featuring sarongs, kains (another cloth wrapped to make a skirt), and selendangs (a shoulder cloth). “It’s pieces my grandmother would wear, that my great-grandmother would wear. My mother would go to Indonesia every year and buy a suitcase full of batiks from artisans.”
King began consulting with batik experts, including curators at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Indonesian Embassy, to decide what to do with the vast array of fabrics. While there were some museum-worthy pieces that needed to be preserved, she was keen to ensure the textiles would have a second life. “It kind of became apparent to me that this collection of fabrics needed to be seen,” she continues. “We agreed that if they just sat in a box or in a museum, they would disappear and become a lost art only meant for people that frequent museums, really.”
That’s why the designer has collaborated with British menswear brand New Lingwood to create a 30-piece collection, launched during London Craft Week, of one-of-a-kind shirts, trousers, and dressing gowns created via upcycled fabrics from her mother’s archive. “We used silhouettes that we knew would resonate with [the brand’s] customers, but it’s a bit experimental—we don’t really know what the reaction will be because batik can be quite full-on as an aesthetic,” King laughs.
Beyond the capsule collection, King hopes to create a wider exhibition that will showcase the amount of work that actually goes into the traditional art of batik—which usually involves the artisan drawing or stamping onto the cloth with wax. Once this dries, it acts as a barrier to the dye, resulting in the print. “I don’t think people appreciate how this cloth is actually made,” she says. “I learned this with the first batik collection I did because each piece is hand drawn; they each take literally a day to make.”
Indeed, King fears that traditional Indonesian batik is in danger of dying out, despite its UNESCO heritage status, because it is such a time-consuming, labor-intensive process. Many of the batik prints that we see today are printed directly onto the fabric, rather than being hand drawn or hand stamped. “A lot of people just favor a more cost-effective [way] of doing it, basically,” she explains.
The designer is now working with one of the oldest batik factories in Yogyakarta, an hour from Bali, in a bid to bring the craft to a new audience. “The woman who runs it now took over from her parents and is 80 years old; she has no children,” King says. “I really want to learn the true traditional Indonesian way [of doing it] and adopt it into my practice.” Her batik-loving mother would be proud.