Subaqueous Homesick Blues: New batik scarf series

With a nod to Bob Dylan, we announce a new marine life batik scarf series.

Original batik 13″ x 70″ crepe de chine scarves; hand wash or dry clean.

I recently acquired a nice fish tjap (Indonesian batik stamp) from Mingei World Arts, friendly people who import (and sell) regular shipments of high quality tjaps. I already had a seaweed/leaf tjap so decided to create an underwater series using these and other stamps to produce complex three dimensional scenes. I describe the production process for each scarf and show pictures of the stamps I used in the Gallery below.

Subaqueous Homesick Blues #1 (Sold)

Using a rather foul and complex hot wax mixture, the first layer of stamps (all the areas that show the white background) was laid down. The bubbles (white dots) were both part of the fish tjap and added using a small brush and hot wax. After sealing any gaps in the wax with gutta, the blank areas within the tjaps were painted. A light blue background was then added. The second layer of stamps (the light blue background) was then laid down and the sealing and painting process repeated. The second and subsequent layers of stamps add the perspective and depth to the work. The final dark blue background layer was then painted. The scarf was hot ironed between sheets of clean newspaper to remove most of the wax, then rolled in clean newspaper and steamed for 3-4 hours to set the dye. Finally the scarf was dry cleaned to remove the small amount of residual wax. Quite a process!

Subaqueous Homesick Blues #2 (Sold)

This one is both more complex, as it uses six tjaps and three layers of stamping, and a little easier as there is no painting within the boundaries of the tjap. You can follow the sequence; the first layer of wax protects the original white color of the scarf, the second stamping protects the added light blue background and the third protects the purple/gray second background. The final background layer was created using both darker blue and purple dyes in a random pattern over the entire scarf. Finishing was as described above.

Subaqueous Homesick Blues #3 (Sold)

This scarf is similar to the one above but uses seven tjaps. You can figure out which layer each tjap was used on by identifying the color the stamping wax covered, starting with the original white scarf and following the color changes of each increasingly dark background.
A couple of the tjaps used on #2 are missing here and three new ones have been added. See if you can spot them in the gallery below.

Subaqueous Homesick Blues #4

This scarf was created like #1, starting with white silk and using just two stamps. The fish stamp incorporates the thin tendrils of seaweed; the second stamp has five seaweed leaves. The scarf has two layers of stamping and painting, each followed by an increasingly dark background layer, light blue and dark blue.

The gallery below comprises pictures of the nine tjaps (batik stamps) used to make the four scarves above.