I Nyoman Sudira A Breath of Fresh Air in Bali’s Weaving Business
I Wayan Sudira’s presence is a breath of fresh air in the weaving business in Bali. Despite his self-taught computer knowledge, he has offered an alternative process of simplified and productive weaving.
By
PUTU FAJAR ARCANA
·5 minutes read
PUTU FAJAR ARCANA
I Nyoman Sudira
I Nyoman Sudira, 70, has never sat down at a manual weaving loom. Actually, he even has no weaving skills at all. His feet have not pressed and depressed the pedal of a loom. Not to mention interlacing weft to form the motifs of woven fabric -- it would surely make him quiver.
Sudira got agitated when he watched his wife, Ni Wayan Astiti, 68, engaged in the tiring work of weaving endek (tied-motif) fabric. The process, from white-thread rolling and motif drawing to weaving on an alat tenun bukan mesin (non-mechanical loom, or ATBM) involved at least 10 stages of work.
“It took months to complete. I felt pity. The productivity was thus low,” said Sudira at the end of April 2022 at Astiti Weaving Company’s workshop in Banjar Jero Kapal, Gelgel, Klungkung, Bali.
In fact, Sudira related, his wife had been weaving since her teens, especially songket (embroidered) and endek cloths. Generally, he added, teenagers in Gelgel village were skilled in weaving, until the 1980s. “In almost every home, somebody was capable of weaving,” he said.
It is estimated that during the reign of Dalem Waturenggong (1460-1550), Gelgel Kingdom, Balinese culture enjoyed its heyday, synonymous with the king’s designation. The local community mastered the skills of weaving, painting, carving and literary writing. According to Sudira, weaving skills in Gelgel were handed down from generation to generation. Skill performance was mostly manifested in the spirit of yadnya or sincere dedication to serve ceremonial purposes.
“All types of fabric, notably songket, originally functioned as a means of holding ceremonies. Luxury clothing was only worn by the nobility,” said the retired civil servant.
By the end of the 2000s, noted Sudira, the weavers in his village were dropping out. Several weaving companies were even closing down. The decline was primarily due to the long, time-consuming and expensive working process. “The entire process was manual. Therefore, one could not be precise -- with the design motif, for example,” he said.
PUTU FAJAR ARCANA
I Nyoman Sudira
After retiring as a civil servant in 2008, Sudira helped his wife develop Astiti. At first, he modernized the process by applying computer technology in designing cloth motifs. He used the Corel Draw application to design the motifs of endek fabric. Previously, woven-cloth designers drew motifs manually.
“The manual process was tough. Designing motifs on threads was done manually by imitating the existing ones. It took a lot of time, possibly a week,” said Sudira.
In the manual process Sudira referred to, the designer drew on threads with a brush one-by-one, imitating motifs already prepared on paper. “It’s a repetitive process, with redrawing required on each tamplig,” said Sudira.
Tamplig is a set of threads in a weaving, complete with warp and weft.
Simplifying work
After modernizing the motif-designing process, Sudira discovered a more effective method to transfer motif drawings onto thread sets: he only needed to make printouts of the completed motif design to be perforated. “The motif holes are superimposed on thread sets and traced. So, it’s just like motif printing,” said Sudira.
Next in the process, Sudira assigns the thread motif tying to residents around his house. No less than 10 residents do thread motif tying work. “This tying process is called endek in Balinese,” he said.
Formerly, continued Sudira, the thread motif tying process could only be handled by certain people, but today everybody can do the work. Not infrequently, this is done by students of the textile department from various regions in Indonesia apprenticing at his workshop.
The subsequent processes of thread immersion, untying, dyeing and finally weaving are conducted by employees with specific skills. Currently, as the COVID-19 pandemic continues unabated, Astiti’s workshop only employs five weavers. Earlier, there might have been as many as 20.
PUTU FAJAR ARCANA
I Nyoman Sudira
Endek woven fabric, said Sudira, was, in the past, part of songket. “A songket piece used to be partly endek. Since 1986, endek has been woven separately,” he pointed out.
The separation occurred when the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) created alat2 tenun bukan mesin (non-mechanic weaving devices, or ATBMs) that were later distributed to weaving groups in Bali. At the time, said Sudira, ITB instructors came to train weavers in Bali. The endek weaving groups now spreading to several regencies in Bali are therefore the result of the ATBM training.
The digital application utilization to design endek weaving motifs has given Sudira the opportunity to save the classic motifs of Bali. “At least 120 motifs have been saved and modified to give contemporary features,” he revealed.
At least 120 motifs have been saved and modified to give contemporary features.
This also has an implication for the productivity and price of the fabric. By the manual process, a sheet of 10-meter cloth takes 3-5 months to finish. “Now it only takes a maximum of 1-2 months. The price can be lower,” said Sudira.
Sadly, the modernization introduced by Sudira has not been widely followed by craftspeople in the region. In fact, he has provided training for different weaving groups all over Bali. “Usually there’s a limitation in the command of computer programs. Many of them choose to work manually. The reason is their familiarity with manual work,” said Sudira.
Sudira’s presence is a breath of fresh air in the weaving business in Bali. Despite his self-taught computer knowledge, he has offered an alternative process of simplified and productive weaving. His presence has set Bali’s weaving industry in motion to reach broader segments of the public. In recent years, endek woven fabric has no longer retained its formal and rigid nuances, but has rather portrayed something more relaxed and exhilarating.
