Wax, Glue, and Color: Gathering Evidence from Two Texts About Batik

Text A: The Art of Batik

1Batik is a way of decorating cloth with wax and dye. The word comes from Indonesia, a country in Southeast Asia made up of thousands of islands. Artists there, especially on the island of Java, have made batik for hundreds of years. Today, it is one of Indonesia's best-known arts.

2Batik works because wax keeps dye out. First, an artist draws a pattern on plain cloth. Next, the artist covers parts of the pattern with hot, melted wax. Then the cloth goes into a tub of dye. The dye soaks into the bare cloth, but the waxed parts keep their first color.

3To draw fine lines of wax, many artists use a tool called a canting. It has a small copper cup with a thin spout, attached to a handle. Hot wax flows out of the spout like ink from a pen. Some workshops also use a copper stamp called a cap. Pressing a waxy cap onto the cloth prints a whole pattern at once, which is much faster than drawing it by hand.

4A batik with many colors takes patience. After the first dye bath, the artist waxes new parts of the cloth and dips it into a darker dye. This can happen again and again. At the end, the wax is removed, often by boiling the cloth in water. Sometimes the wax cracks during the work, and dye seeps into the cracks. Many people think the thin, wandering lines this leaves add to the cloth's beauty.

5Batik patterns often have names and meanings. Some show flowers, birds, or waves, and a few were once worn only by royal families. Many people in Indonesia wear batik to work, to school, or to special events. The country even holds a national batik day every year.

Text B: Glue Batik in Room 14 (from our class newsletter, by Amara)

1Last month, our art teacher, Mr. Delgado, showed us a batik cloth from Indonesia, and then he told us we would make our own. We could not use hot wax at school, so we used a safer material: blue school glue gel.

2First, each of us drew a pattern in pencil on a square of white cotton. Then we squeezed glue over the pencil lines. My first lines were too thin, and they broke apart as they dried. Thick lines worked much better. The glue had to dry overnight.

3The next day, we brushed fabric paint over our whole squares. The paint soaked into the cloth everywhere except under the glue. After the paint dried, we soaked the squares in warm water and rubbed off the glue. White lines appeared right where the glue had been!

4Mr. Delgado sewed our squares together into one big banner for the front hall. The project took three days, but everyone agreed it was worth the wait.