Cotton shoulder cloth

Unknown artist

Because of their relations before and during the colonial period with the east coast of Sumatra (the Karo Batak served as soldiers and worked on the plantations), the Karo had access to trading goods on the coast for a very long time. Here they bought white cotton rags and brought them to their wives in the mountains. In the 19th century the Karo were characterized by their blue clothing. The white trade rags were dipped in vegetable indigo dye baths to be used in the same way as hand woven fabrics. The batu jala is one such blue-dyed Karo cloth.Batu jala are the stones (according to Joustra in 1907:118), usually an iron chain, at the bottom of a throwing net. The cut-out patterns at the edges of the cloth have a similar shape.‖ By applying two different cut-out techniques, fold resist and tritik, (Larsen 1976:16a and d) the Karoverians managed to apply such white patterns in the blue cloths. According to information from C.J. Westenberg, then Controller of Karo, Jasper and Pirngadie (1916:83) reproduced that the Karo call these cut-out motifs "ayau" and the making of those patterns "ayauwi" (see also Indonesian Art: A Loan Exhibition From the Royal Indies Institute Amsterdam, The Netherlands, October 31 to December 31, 1948: 56, no. 115). Joustra (1907:116) gives the word "ayo" for the indented stripes made mainly along the ends of the cloth (fold plangi), and in a line through the middle of the cloth (tritik), from selvedge to selvedge. If, like this one, the cloth has two stripes, the cloth is called "batu jala si duwa ayo" (Joustra 1907:118). The tritik technique is not used on this cloth.‖ The batu jala was mainly used as a headscarf on ritual occasions by unmarried girls (Niessen 1993:5, figs. 3,4) and also as a shoulder cloth especially for girls (Niessen 1993:67, fig. 52). In the same illustration it is worn by a boy as a shawl. In Niessen (u.p./2004), the batu jala is worn around the neck by a man.‖ The cloth is made of imported cotton fabric and is not woven locally.‖ The Karo Batak make vegetable blue dye from indigofera tinctoria (sarap) and marsdenia tinctoria (selawen). If the cloth has a purplish-red appearance, this may have been caused by a special bath called cinah, which contains blood from the buffalo.‖ Indentation techniques: the batu jala is decorated at the ends by using a folding indentation technique (Larsen 1976:16, fig. a). According to Jasper and Pirngadie, the white spots can be created "by sewing on small pieces of bamboo husk, which are removed again after the blue replacement" (1916:84). It is not clear whether he meant the white stripes along the ends of the cloth. A stripe is applied through the middle of the cloth using the tritik cut-out technique.