A Case Against Bags and Crafts Made of Vintage Batik

1.

Vintage batik are done on both sides of the cloth. On bags one whole side is always wasted by being glued on to some form of padding in the creation of a bag. Modern batik tulis are only done on one side of the cloth, because of modern commercial factors: costs and time. It is a sin to waste a whole side of such beautifully made material!

2.

Glues used are not always of good quality. And in a lot of cases, resulted in very strong glue smell, or air bubbles developing under the glued cloth.

3.

Glued fabrics are always going to be sensitive to climate change, namely humidity. A slight change in humidity during storage, or more drastic ones such as body moisture and rain, will cause a reaction with the glue underneath the batik tulis, and will quickly cause "bubbling" or worst still, fungus.

4.

Depending on the quality of glue, fabric, and workmanship, once folded, fold marks will appear and they are very hard to reverse. Even more so than leather, which is thicker and therefore harder to "fold" to begin with.

5.

Functionally speaking, certain types of bags will rub against your hip, and jeans, rather extensively. Colour transfers often occurred, and unlike canvas and other stronger material, vintage batik is made of old delicate cotton fabric, with hand dipped dyes sitting on them causing the cleaning of colour transfer to be almost an impossible task without endangering wiping the batik's dye itself.

6.

Another functional drawback: vintage cotton is not the most robust of material, corners of bags are known to wear out really easily, and in some cases back of them, as those parts are always prone to rubbing and wear in any bags. Vintage cotton batik wear out easily. In cases where bags were not designed well, the bags' own parts (harder ones, such as their hardware), can rub against the surface of the bags. Although these are common properties in any bags, vintage cotton batik tulis is a material that is especially prone to such frictions.

7.

Constructively speaking, vintage cotton batik tulis, even after glued to sheets of padding, will always be softer compared to canvas or leather. Tensions between soft and thin vintage cotton combined with leather is not always the best, causing a variety of awkward aesthetic effects, except in extremely well thought out designs, which is rare.

8.

They are not cheap. The BULK OF THE PRICE is on the fact that the batik tulis used is VINTAGE and sometimes allegedly RARE. The cheapest of a reasonably designed ones is about USD $250-$300 each.