King Chulalongkorn’s travels and collections from Java. Part I: The royal batik exhibition now on display in Bangkok

IO – Last November an exhibition of the 19th and early 20th century batik collection of King Rama V of Thailand was opened in Bangkok by Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn who is the princess royal and sister to the newly crowned Thai king, King Rama X. The very popular Princess Sirindhorn who is affectionately known as “Phra Thep” a reduction of her title meaning “prin­cess angel” in Thai shares a great sim­ilarity to King Rama V for she too is a sort of Renaissance woman interested in all subjects. The scholarly Princess who is a graduate of the Faculty of Arts of Chulalongkorn University has visited Indonesia several times and has even written a book on Indonesian culture covering such Indonesian cul­tural traditions as batik and wayang. Attending the opening of the exhibi­tion were Gusti Kanjeng Ratu Hemas, queen consort of the current Sultan of Jogjakarta, Sultan Hamengkubuwono X and Gusti Kanjeng Bendara Raden Ayu Adipati Paku Alam, the consort of Paku Alam X of Jogjakarta who donat­ed three batiks from her batik atelier.

The exhibition which bears the title: “A Royal Treasure: The Java­nese Batik Collection of King Chu­lalongkorn of Siam” is housed at the Queen Sirikit Museum of Textiles in the Grand Palace complex in Bang­kok. The exhibition runs from the 1st of November 2018 till the 31st of May 2021 and is open daily from 09.00 am to 16.30 pm. Thirty-seven pieces of King Rama V’s collection were on dis­play and then rotated in August. The batiks on display will be rotated every six months so that finally all the pieces will have been on view.

King Rama V is perhaps bet­ter-known outside of Thailand as King Chulalongkorn whose governess Anna Leonowns wrote a book about her ex­periences as governess to the Thai royal children. The book was later turned into Broadway plays and Hollywood films. King Chulalongkorn was at the time the crown prince and later he was crowned as King Rama V.

King Rama V was a very remark­able man who was the first Thai king to travel outside of Thailand. He vis­ited the Netherlands East Indies as Indonesia was known at the time, three times namely in 1871, 1896 and 1901. During each of his visits he bought batiks which he greatly en­joyed although most of his batik pur­chases were made during his longest and most extensive visit in 1896.

The exhibition of King Rama V’s batik collection was created by Sart­tarat Muddin as the Queen Sirikit Textile Museum curator with Dale Carolyn Gluckman as consulting curator. The museum itself was built in 1870 by King Rama V as the Tax Office of the Ministry of Finance. Pre­viously, there were barracks on the site which were later demolished. King Rama V was inspired by build­ings in the Netherlands Indies that he saw during his visits and the mu­seum does show some similarities with Netherlands Indies architecture. In 2003 the building was no longer in use and Queen Sirikit asked that she be allowed to turn it into a textile mu­seum. For this it underwent a seven year renovation to turn it into a state-of-the-art museum. It also houses Thailand’s first textile conservation laboratory.

“Her Majesty Queen Sirikit is a remarkable woman with great fore­sight,” says Mirta Kartohadiprodjo, founder of Indonesia’s Femina mag­azine who interviewed the Queen in 1978. “In the 1980’s Queen Sirikit sent Thai weavers to different parts of Indonesia which produce ikat tex­tiles, to learn their different patterns, styles and methods. They learnt about ikat in songkets (Sumatran brocade tex­tiles), ikat weaving in Eastern Indonesia and all over the Archipelago. Then when they returned to Thailand a workshop was held where the Queen invited farm­ers, weavers and even foreign experts in ikat techniques to learn about ikat. Queen Sirikit then launched Thai silk ikat weavings. Silk on silk – which previously they did not pro­duce. This has further enriched Thai textiles today. I was invited to Queen Sirikit’s birthday celebrations where she launched the Thai silk ikat.”

King Rama V as King Chulalong­korn was later known was fascinated by batik and must have loved it as he purchased a total of three hun­dred and seven batik pieces during his many visits to Java – simply as a collector. “He did not buy the batiks with any intention of actually us­ing the batik either to be worn or as household decoration such as wall hangings or table cloths. He simply collected them because he liked them and was curious about them,” explained curator Sarttarat Muddin, an archaeologist graduated from Silpakorn Universi­ty (founded by renown Italian artist Corrado Feroci) who discovered that she is more interested in history of art than in archaeology and who has vis­ited Java several times for textile re­search. She intends to lead a tour of Thai nationals interested in following in the footsteps of King Rama V in Java later this year.

Some of King Rama V’s batik col­lection was exhibited in 1897 but not since then. After his death his batik collection remained untouched. “The collection belongs to the palace and not to the Queen Sirikit Textiles Mu­seum. After King Rama V died, pal­ace retainers were not sure what to do with such a collection and no one knew anything about batik. So, the batiks were kept in chests and it was only about twenty years ago that the palace opened the chests and began to look at the collection and then be­gan to inventories it and to roll the textiles rather than fold them into chests. In about 2010 Prof Smithi was al­lowed to look at the collection and after the Queen Sirikit Museum was allowed to see it slowly the idea to create an exhibition was born. I was one of the lucky museum staff that was first permitted to first see the ba­tik collection,” disclosed Sarttarat Muddin.

In researching King Rama V’s ba­tik collection for the exhibition, the Queen Sirikit Museum reached out to several Indonesian textile experts and curators. Amongst those involved were Siti Mariah Waworuntu, Secre­tary General of the Traditional Textile Arts Society of Southeast Asia and for many years, editor of the Jurnal Wastra, the journal of the Indonesian Textile Society or Wastraprema. An­other was Judi Achyadi the curator of the Jakarta Textile Museum who was one of the consultants for the batiks from Indonesia. At one point the Thai, American and Indonesian textile experts travelled to the Neth­erlands to visit museums with textile collections as well as archives from that period in their search for more information about King Rama V’s batiks.

The Javanese batik exhibition of King Chulalongkorn or Rama V is a very important and highly interest­ing batik exhibition from one of the most unique and extraordinary batik collections in the world. King Rama’s collection of batiks are mainly from the royal courts of central Java and the workshops of Indo-European la­dies. Judi Achjadi commented, “It is important because other museums do not have 307 pieces from a 30-year period. So, we know exactly the quality and the emphasis in batik during that period. The collections in other museums cover longer periods but have less pieces for those periods.”

Judi Achyadi then explained, “Another important aspect of the Rama V collection are the West Javanese batik pieces. In the collection the larger portions of batik from the Tasikmalaya – Garut area have a red dye that is equivalent to anything that ever came out of Lasem at the time – and no one has ever seen this before! It’s the same gorgeous red as Lasem’s! That red is no longer produced there and so the batiks provide additional information about West Javanese batik that not many people were very interested in before.”

“Of course, now in Lasem,” continued Judi Achyadi, “they also no longer produce the same distinctive red as they used to because firstly, the water used in the process is now polluted and secondly, has more chalk in it than before – and all these things change the composition of the chemicals in the water and affect the color of the dye. From the 1800s until today Garut was using Tasikmalaya patterns and vice versa but the glorious red is gone. In Rama V’s collection are 15 pieces from that area and I tell you opening one by one all those rare Sundanese batiks was a thrill!”

Researchers for Rama V’s collection went to the town of Garut in West Java where King Rama stayed for a period. They found that the regional government of Garut have produced a book about King Rama’s visit but the Sundanese do not have information about the batik produced in West Java or Sun­daland between 1871 and 1901 when King Rama visited Indonesia.

King Rama was interested in all sorts of styles and motifs from the most refined aristocratic batiks made by highly skilled crafts women to the rustic batiks of ordinary people. Sometimes, he bought batiks from simple traders at railway stations or from hawkers he met during the course of his journeys.

“The king made detailed notes about his batiks noting where he bought a particular, batik, the name of the motif, who had made it or sold it to him and the price that he paid for it and that provides textile experts with an enormous amount of infor­mation about 19th century batiks,” explained Raffy Sarttarat, the exhibi­tion curator. It is this together with the fact that they are in an extremely well-preserved condition that makes this collection so valuable.

“Nineteenth century batiks are quite rare and finding them in such a fine con­dition and representing so many styles with copious notes! It is frankly quite amazing and does a great service to the history of Indonesian batik, said Mariah Waworuntu.

Among the important batiks in King Rama V’s collection are five batiks by Carolina Josephina David von Franquemont who is the earliest known producer of Batik Belanda or batik influenced by the European style. Her pieces which date between 1840 when she first opened her ate­lier and 1867 when she died, are extremely rare. Von Franquemont’s atelier was located on the slopes of Mount Ungaran near Semarang. Her batiks were purchased during Rama V’s first trip in 1871. This means that they were at least four years old if they were produced the year she died. Von Franquemont’s batiks were very fashionable at the time and of high quality. “There are no signatures on the Von Franquemont batiks, “ explained Judi Achjadi. So photographs were sent to Harmen Veldhuizen who identified them. It is not easy to identify Von Franquemont batiks as no official identifying marks of her batiks have ever been agreed upon. Veldhuizen is convinced that two of them are definitely Von Franquemont batiks and the remaining three are most likely Von Franquemont batiks or possibly by Van Oosterom. Looking at the content and patterns I agree with him. Rama V’s journal also mentions that they are quite old.”

Finally, there are quite a few batiks in the collec­tion from the Jogjakarta workshop of Wilhelmina van Lawick van Pabst, a relatively little known batik maker barely mentioned in Harmen Veldhu­isen’s seminal book “Batik Belanda.

“Frankly we were puzzled by the batiks produced by Van Lawick van Pabst and we made enquiries in Jogjakarta about her workshop but no one had heard of her,” explained Mariah Waworuntu. “The only thing we were able to discover was a letter in the Paku Alaman library about a batik worker wishing to work for the Paku Alaman who said that she had once worked at the atelier of Mantji Lawek. Sandra Niessen a Canadian Dutch textile expert who mainly spe­cializes in Batak cloths was part of the exhibition research team and she was finally able to work out that the abbreviation of Wilhelmina is Mient­je which was probably pronounced Mantji by the Javanese workers.”

Later during the teams visit to Holland Niessen discovered in the ar­chives in Leiden newspaper clippings at the end of the 19th century about Wilhelmina van Lawick van Pabst, a Chinese lady married to a Dutch­man who had an atelier in Jogjakar­ta where King Rama V was brought and from whom he purchased sev­eral batiks. “Her strength lay in her blues which were extremely vibrant and dark which they have remained till today. There are nearly no batiks by Van Lawick van Pabst in existence other than those in the collection of Rama V. So, they really are import­ant historical artifacts in the history of batik,” commented Mariah Wawo­runtu.

“Van Lawick van Pabstproduced batiks from the late 19^th century till about the turn of the century or very early 20^th century,” explained Judi Achjadi. “Mrs Van Zuylen (the most famous producer of Batik Belanda) on the other hand continued producing batik until her death in 1946. So, she produced batiks for nearly half a century. Clearly there were far more Van Zuylen batik created and so many more also survived. Her batiks were sold everywhere: in the Malay areas of Eastern Sumatra, Riau and Siak, in Singapore and Malaysia, in northern Sulawesi and many other places. Van Lawick van Pabst’s batiks were mainly bought by the Dutch and went into some of the royal collections. King Rama V had Van Lawick van Pabst batiks but no Van Zuylen or Metz batiks because he never went to Pekalongan. This is why it is not a complete collection although it is a very valuable and interesting one.”

Despite not having had the opportunity to visit Pekalongan there are however pieces from the atelier of Mrs A. F. J. Jans of Pekalongan. She was the only Dutch lady who had a batik atelier in Pekalongan where she lived with her Dutch husband Theodor J. Jans on the Heerenstaraat and produced many floral batiks with bouquets. King Rama V bought the Jans batiks from hawkers who came by his hotel (not in Pekalongan) and offered them to him. King Rama V’s collection has expanded the known number of batiks produced by Jans.

Three members of the Thai royal family have been involved with In­donesian textiles and have thereby influenced both Thai and Indonesian textiles, namely HM King Rama V, HM Queen Sirikit and HRH Princess Sirindhorn. A Royal Treasure: The Javanese Batik Collection of King Chulalongkorn of Siam, is a very important exhibition. Not only for batik or for Thailand and Indonesia but for ASEAN as a whole which re­ally should stress such links between ASEAN member states. The question that obviously comes to mind is why there is no plan to make this into a travelling exhibition. Not merely to In­donesia and fellow ASEAN states but also to Australia, Europe, America and other Asian countries. It will not only promote Thailand and Indonesia – but also ASEAN cultural traditions. With the Indonesian government’s new cultural strategy as the basis for our foreign policy, supporting this ex­hibition would make eminent sense – as would ASEAN providing fund­ing for this truly important historical ASEAN cultural exhibition. (Tamalia Alisjahbana)

If you enjoyed reading this article you may also enjoy Part II of the article by the same writer:  https://observerid.com/king-chulalongkorns-travels-and-collections-from-java-part-ii-the-kings-affection-for-java-and-his-travels-there/