Author: Sabine Bolk

During the workshop ‘A Tapestry of Rules: Institutions and cloth industries in global comparative perspective, 1750-2000’ organised by by the research team engaged in the European Research Council funded project ‘Race to the Bottom? Family labour, household livelihood and consumption in the relocation of textile production between ca. 1780 and 1990’, I will give a talk about Talk ‘Things That Talk: Fabric(s) of Leiden’.

In my current researchproject for the online platform Things That Talk I am diving into the history of the Leidsche Katoenmaatschappij (LKM) together with a team of students {of the University Leiden}. On the Zone ‘Fabric(s) of Leiden’ within the website we will make stories about this cotton-printing company with objects and documents kept in different Dutch collections.
The city Leiden has in many different ways a connection with textile; the textiles produced within the city and the textiles brought to Leiden for the museums-collections.  An important company in all of this was the LKM. LKM is known by experts, but forgotten by many. The factory of LKM was located in the center of the city and produced printed cotton for export to Asia and Africa. So a local company with a global history. The company started in Belgium in 1756. In 1835 it moved to Leiden where it was bought by Van Wensen and Driessen. The LKM produced until 1932 and stopped officially in 1936. The name is slowly forgotten. Over time interesting objects that can tell us about this company’s history got spread out over different collections in the Netherlands. These objects can tell us more on the company; who run it, who worked there, the global connection and the development of cotton-printing. With Things That Talk we will tell these stories, using a samplebook or fragment, a complete cloth or written label, so people can learn more about the ‘Fabric of Leiden.

The workshop ‘A Tapestry of Rules: Institutions and cloth industries in global comparative perspective, 1750-2000’ will be held in a hybrid format: the live sessions will be held at Utrecht and virtual sessions on MS teams. We also welcome external participants who are interested in the workshop. You can do so by joining us virtually via MS TEAMS. For those interested, please send a request to Bianca Visser, at b.visser@uu.nl.

Thursday 30 June 2022 – 09:00

End date and time Friday 1 July 2022 – 17:00

For more information on the program click here

During The Association of Dress Historians Annual New Research Conference 2022 I will share part of my recent research project: Retelling the History of the (Indo-)European influence on Batik. My current research is focussed on the wearer, especially on ladies that were of European descent, who dressed in Batik sarongs themselves, during colonial times in Indonesia. Extensive collections have been kept in the Netherlands, privately and in museum-collections. These kept batik-collections can give us new interesting insides and different angles on how to share this history.
For this presentation I focus on 41 batiks that were donated by Jonkvrouwe Anna Cecile Aurélie Jeanne Clifford, Jonkvrouwe as in damsel. Hence the title “A Batik collection fit for a Lady”. The donation is an unusual wardrobe for a lady that apparently had never been to Indonesia herself. The batiks most likely belonged to her mother, Theodora Adriana Lammers van Toorenburg, who was born in 1852 in the former Dutch East Indies. This collection provides us with interesting insights into what was worn by whom and how the wearer can provide us with provenance that is often overlooked in batik-research.

The Association of Dress Historians Annual New Research Conference 2022 with the focus on New Research in Dress History will be held offline at National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh and online (for ADH members only, see info on membership here).

For more info check dresshistorians.org
For tickets and more on the program see www.eventbrite.co.uk

Re-telling the History of (Indo-)European Influence on Batik

Tuesday 3 May 2022 19pm – 20.30pm

Vortrag in englischer Sprache 
von Sabine Bolk 

Sabine Bolk focuses on batiks made between 1840-1890 that are either attributed to an Indo-European Batik entrepreneur or are as seen as having an Indo-European style or influence. As starting point for re-telling the story she uses batiks attributed to Carolina Josephina van Franquemont (1815-1867). What was the actual Dutch, European and Indo-European influence on Javanese batik and what other factors played a role in this development? 

Sabine Bolk (1984), has been an artist since 2007. She studied at the Art Academy St. Joost in Breda (NL) and lives now in Utrecht (NL). She is a passionate researcher on Batik and held several group and solo exhibitions. 

Anmeldung: friends@weltmuseumwien.at 

Teilnahme: frei (zzgl. gültigem Museumsticket für Nicht-Mitglieder) 
Treffpunkt: Weltmuseum Wien Forum

www.weltmuseumwien.at

Bitte beachten Sie für diese Veranstaltung die aktuellen Sicherheitsvorkehrungen.

Streamed first in a shorter version on JFW.tv & Youtube, now the Fashion Conversation hosted by Jakarta Fashion Week in collaboration with Erasmushuis is online in full!

Batik is a masterpiece, a national treasure, an identity. Sadly, it is suffering a slow death. It’s no easy task to keep it alive amid changing times and taste. Some, understandably, gave up halfway, daunted by the challenge. So how do we make this traditional art appealing to the younger generation? To produce and to wear. Can we truly succeed in merging traditional values with modern lifestyle?

In ‘The Future of Batik’ hosted by Tony Sugriata of aNERDgallery we discuss this topic with presentations given by me, Ibu Sita and Mas Direz. A discussion at the end in which we responded to the points of view of 4 pembatiks. Very thankful Ibu Widianti Widjaya, Ibu Ramini, Miss Dwi & Miss Nurul share their ideas on ‘The Future of Batik’ with me for this talk.

It was great to share on Batik in a more historical context within an platform focussed on new fashion. Happy I get to bring something else to the runway. Watch it back on Youtube! What are your thought on this topic? And how do you think we can take Batik with us to the future? Let us know in a comment under the video!

Thanks Jakarta Fashion Week & Erasmushuis Jakarta for invited me and hosting this great inspiring talk on ‘The Future of Batik’!

Months in the making and finally here, the magazine BATIK!

After we, me, Romée Mulder & Myrthe Groot, hosted the Batik Stand in 2019, the Tong Tong Fair invited us to collaborate to make Batik the theme for the next TTF. Unfortunatly the TTF couldn’t take place in 2020, so we hosted an online Batik Stand instead. 
From beginning of this year till about July I was working, together with Florine Koning & Leslie Boon, on this magazine. Again the TTF couldn’t take place in September, but the idea was to publish the magazine either way. 
With a lot of things going on behind the scenes, the magazine is now finally here.

You find in the magazine next to several articles by my hand, much more great Batik content. Interviews with Guave, Batikmaker Miss Nurul & batikscholar Renske Heringa. A lovely illustrated tutorial how to wrap a Batik by Jeroen Krul , great to have made this together. A wonderful step by step Batik DIY by Shuen-Li Spirit. Two of our Online Batik Stand guests return, showing the Batik kept & passed on in their family, Rachel de Vries & Cindy Smits, and we find two more to share their precious heirloom, thank you! Spread throughout the magazine are Batik wannahave items by LARAS, DEWI, Istimewa, Francis Bakt & Maureen Tan, thanks for your contribution. 

Thanks Tony Sugiarta for the interview with Miss Nurul!

Also a thank you to NMvW, Wereldmuseum & UB Leiden voor providing us with historical & high quality photos of Batik for the magazine!

And thank you to Eliza Bordeaux for shooting new portraits of me . So happy with them!

Buy the magazine BATIK! now, order online at Stichting Tong Tong https://stichtingtongtong.nl/batik-glossy/ or ask for it at your local bookstore. The magazine is in Dutch. 

Madjoe Dua Madua-Middag op zondag 14 november 14u – 18u bij het Zimihc Theater Stefanus, Braziliëdreef 2 in Utrecht. Naast een lezing over mijn ‘journey to batik’ bent u welkom om batiks uit eigen collectie mee te nemen naar het spreekuur.

Meer info op madjoeduautrecht.nl

On Monday 25 October 19.30pm I am invited to give a talk on my ‘journey to Batik’ at Stichting Ana Upu in Lunteren. More info in the Facebook event

In Dutch & Bahasa Indonesia, you can change the language in the menu, enjoy!

Mini ‘Brown Bag’ Research Session from 13h – 16h

In an effort to nurture research on the collection of the Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen (NMVW), which consists of nearly 450,000 objects and 750,000 photographic images, the Research Center for Material Culture (RCMC), the research institute of the Tropenmuseum, the Museum Volkenkunde, the Afrika Museum, and the Wereldmuseum in Rotterdam, welcomes fellows, junior fellows, research associates and university student interns. To learn more about each other’s inquiries and offer a means of doing research in a time in which social distancing and travel restrictions ask that we think our work differently, this mini-conference offers just one way for us to connect across spaces. 

15:20 – 15:50:

Panel IV: Fashioning the stories we tell

Moderator: Daan van Dartel

• Ella Broek, Jane Stjeward-Schubert & Michelle Piergoelam, ‘The technique and the experience of Afro-Surinamese costume’
• Sabine Bolk, ‘Project Re-telling the History of the (Indo-)European Influence on Batik’

Sabine Bolk | Project Re-telling the History of the (Indo-)European Influence on Batik

My researchproject is focused on batiks made between 1840-1890 that are either attributed to an Indo-European Batikentrepreneur or are seen as having an Indo-European style or influence. I am trying to re-tell this history by determine what we can actually view as ‘European’ or ‘Indo-European’ influence.  To re-tell the history of the (Indo-)European influence on Batik, I use as a starting point the story and batiks attributed to Carolina Josephina von Franquemont (1815-1867). 

She is seen as the first entrepreneur that introduced a European style into Javanese batiks. Over the years many batiks got attributed to her with little or unclear provenance, mentioning the Batiks are made ‘in the style of Von Franquemont’ or using the term ‘Prankemon’. They were used in books which even resulted in new attributions from the 1990’s onwards. On the other hand I found donated pieces of which the owners claim it was made her, but some of these pieces have never been displayed or weren’t photographed yet.

At the moment I am mapping out what is actually the Dutch, European and Indo-European influence on Javanese batik. I am working out the provenance of all batiks attributed {at one point in time}  to Von Franquemont in the NMvW and Wereldmuseum collection. And hopefully I can share a little on the laboratoriumresearch we are hoping to do on the colours used in these Batiks.

BIO

Sabine Bolk (1984) is a Dutch artist who has been exploring Batik, the Indonesian resist-dye technique for textile, for the last 12 years. The inspiration doesn’t only come from the technique, but also from the language of the patterns and the philosophy of Batik. On her blog ’The journey to Batik’ she writes about her discoveries, journeys and research. In 2009 and 2016 Sabine went to Java, Indonesia, to document to process of Batik making. In October 2019 she went to Indonesia to launch her current researchproject. In her researchproject she works on Retelling the History of the (Indo-)European Influence on Batik. Sabine is currently a Research Associate at the Research Center for Material Culture in Leiden (NL) to research the batik collections in Dutch museums & archives. She writes for different platforms, organises events, gives talks, presentations and workshops. She not only gets inspiration from Batik, she also works on promoting, preserving and protecting Batik.