Ceremonial cloth

From a distance one sees just the deep dark indigo of this textile. Moving closer, fine batik patterns appear on the handspun cloth—a landscape of buildings and gardens, with disembodied wings floating amid trees and vines. Only after a good hard stare do other designs emerge: plants transforming into abstract flying birds or curious long-trunked creatures. The patterns were drawn with a thin stylus filled with wax, and then the textile was dipped, over a series of days or even weeks, into an indigo-dye bath. Finally, the wax is removed to reveal the pattern on the protected parts of the cloth.

This type of landscape motif is called semen in Javanese, derived from semi, to sprout. The wings are said to represent the wings of Garuda, a Hindu divinity that has remained symbolically important long after the region’s widespread conversion to Islam.