What to Look at When Buying Batik Bali

Batik Bali or Balinese batik can now be found in various shops around the island. It becomes more ubiquitous, especially in the hottest tourism spots in the southern part of the island, where several batik studios are running their business by both selling the exotic traditional garment and opening a batik class for tourists who want to practice the art of batik making. If you want to buy Balinese batik as a souvenir, you need to mind everything that provides you with a guarantee that the garment that you buy is the genuine and high-quality one. Here they are.

Price

Although an expensive price does not necessarily indicate the high quality of a product, a genuine batik garment tends to be expensive because genuine batik is not mass-produced. It is made using a manual hand-painting method that requires time and skills. Mass-produced screen-printed batik does exist in the market and they tend to be cheaper, but they cannot be considered genuine batik that is of high quality. If you find an unreasonably cheap batik garment, you should be suspicious about its quality. If you find an expensive garment, you should take the next factors below into consideration to make sure that you are not schemed into buying a low-quality product at a high price.

Pattern

Normally, batik uses repeating patterns on its entire surface, with very slight modifications and accents. That’s, however, how Javanese batik looks. Batik Bali is different because its manufacturing procedure is not required to abide by very strict batik-making rules, especially in terms of patterns. The variations are so colorful that you can hardly find two Balinese batik garments that are 100% equal. The patterns that you generally see on a piece of Balinese batik garment are those depicting Balinese cultural icons, such as Barong and fishes, and their look and size may vary from garment to garment.

Material

Balinese batik uses the same material with the one used in Java, that is, unbleached cotton; however, the type of cotton that is used in Bali is somewhat thicker and heavier compared with the one used in Java. A thick garment can thus be a sign of quality when you buy Balinese batik. The manufacturing process, which involves the use of wax, may also cause the fabric to feel somewhat stiff, though you can still sense the comfort factor when you investigate the fabric further. The garment should feel comfortable and soft enough when you try to wear it.