Showing posts with label tjanting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tjanting. Show all posts

Friday, 6 April 2012

Elephant No. 187: Pysanka




It's Good Friday today in the Gregorian calendar, so I thought I'd try making a Ukrainian Easter egg, or pysanka. Strictly speaking, this isn't a real pysanka, since by definition a pysanka is an egg decorated with traditional Ukrainian folk designs, rather than any old egg made with a wax resist.

The word pysanka (pl. pysanky) comes from the verb pysaty ("to write"), because the designs are not painted but written with beeswax. Beeswax is drawn on using a stylus, then dyed, then drawn on again, then dyed in a darker colour and so forth. There is a specialized stylus for pysanky called a kistka; however, a fine-tipped tjanting for batik can also be used. Although the Ukrainians are among the best-known practitioners of this particular art, many other Eastern European groups decorate eggs using a similar process.


Traditional wooden kistka.
Source: http://www.kalyna.ca/eggsupplies.htm


The art of egg-decorating in the Ukraine probably dates back to ancient times, although no actual examples have been found. Some ornamented ceramic eggs have been found, however, in sites related to the Trypillian culture (ca. 5000–3000 B.C.). The oldest true pysanka found so far was excavated in 2008, and was made around the end of the seventeenth century A.D. Although crushed, the egg was complete, and features geometrical designs against a blue-grey background.

Eggs decorated with nature symbols were an important part of a spring ritual involving the Slavic sun god Dazhboh. According to legend, birds were sacred to Dazhboh, and were the only creatures able to get near him. Although humans could never catch the birds, they could gather the eggs. This made the eggs magical objects, seen as a source of life and rebirth after the darkness of winter.

In Christian times, the egg came to be associated with the resurrection and rebirth of humankind. With the adoption of Christianity in the Ukraine in A.D. 988, decorated pysanky were adapted to the new religion. Over time, the art flourished. Under the Soviets, however, the production of pysanky was viewed as a religious practice and was banished, and many museum collections of pysanky were destroyed. In time, pysanky were all but forgotten in the Ukraine, surviving primarily within Ukrainian communities in North and South America. Since Ukrainian independence in 1991, there has been a rebirth of pysanky in the Ukraine.

Interestingly, the Hutsuls—a people living in the Carpathian Mountains of the western Ukraine—believe that the fate of the world rests upon pysanky. As long as the custom continues, the world will exist. If the custom is abandoned, evil in the shape of a terrible serpent will overrun the world. Each year, the story goes, the serpent—who is forever chained to a cliff—sends out his minions to see how many pysanky have been created. If the numbers are too low, his chains are loosened, and he becomes free to wander, wreaking havoc and destruction. If, however, enough pysanky have been created, his chains are tightened and good triumphs over evil for another year.


Pysanky—the way they're supposed to look.
Photo: Luba Petrusha
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pysanky2011.JPG

More commonly, pysanky were thought to protect homes from evil spirits, fire, lightning and other sorts of catastrophe. Eggs with spiral patterns were the most powerful, as evil spirits would be trapped within the spiral forever. Blessed pysanka could also be used to find hidden demons in the home. Even the cloth used to dry pysanky was powerful, and was believed to cure skin diseases.

Commonly given as gifts, pysanky had different meanings, based on colour and pattern. One of my favourites of these is the belief that a girl should never give her beau a pysanka with no design on the top and bottom, as this might cause the young man to lose his hair. For more on pysanky, including history and associated practices and beliefs, there is an excellent overview here.

For today's elephant, I followed some instructions I found online here. There are many other tutorials and videos available online, most of which follow this simple formula:

1. Draw with wax on an egg.
2. Dip the egg in a light colour of dye.
3. Put more wax on the egg where you want to preserve the first dye colour.
4. Dip the egg in a darker colour of dye.
5. Apply more wax.
6. Dip again. Repeat steps five and six as often as you like.
7. Remove wax by running it close to the side of a candle flame and wipe off melted wax.
8. Varnish egg.

That was the theory, anyway, and in practice it is relatively simple. I just lacked the knack.

I started by taking two eggs out of the refrigerator and letting them sit at room temperature for a couple of hours. It's better if they're at room temperature so that the wax adheres. Too cold an egg will make the wax pop right off.




Most instructions say to draw something lightly with pencil first, so I did that. The pencil lines should be light, so that they will mostly lift away with the wax when you wipe the egg down at the end. Another helpful tip, if you want to draw straight lines, is to put a wide rubber band around the egg—the kind that you either find wrapped around broccoli, or the longer ones sometimes wrapped around your mail. I tried this with much trepidation, afraid I'd end up snapping the rubber band around the egg by accident, exploding yolk and white all over the place.






For a stylus, I used a tjanting that I bought just for this. I tried to find an actual kitska, but there were none to be had locally on short notice. I loaded up the tjanting with wax, heated it in a candle, and started drawing.


 



I realized right away that I suck at drawing with wax. It took me a few minutes to realize that I needed to keep the tip of the tjanting warm, and that it worked better if I tilted it downwards. Even though I'd never used this tool before, you'd think I'd have figured out that much.

Although my eggs felt like they were room temperature, they were probably not as warm as I thought, because some of the wax started popping off right away. Also, I didn't use pure beeswax, which was clearly a mistake. Beeswax would likely have stuck to the egg better than the mixed wax I used.




Before putting the egg in its first dye bath, it should be dipped in vinegar. This removes finger oils and allows the dye to take better. I used yellow for my first colour.

The yellow was disappointingly light, so I guess the dye tablets weren't as dark as they looked in the photograph. I added some more wax, dipped it in vinegar again, then dunked the egg in pink. This was a much more saturated colour. However, more wax popped off, allowing the dye to go where I didn't want it.

I added more wax, including wax over some of my previous lines. I dipped it in vinegar again, and this time dipped it in purple. This was also weirdly light, so I dipped the egg in blue instead. This gave me a purple I could live with.




At the same time, I decided to try doing an egg without drawing a design first. I dipped this one in pink after the first wax, then blue, ending up with the same problem of wax popping off.





I let them both air-dry for about half an hour, then patted them dry with paper towel. To remove the wax, I lit a candle and placed the egg in the side of the flame, then wiped it with a paper towel. I found this part slightly tedious. Also, a word of warning: never put the egg directly in the flame, or you'll end up with soot embedded in your design. I made that mistake once or twice when I zoned out for a moment; luckily, only the wax got sooty, so it could still be wiped away.





If I decide to keep these, they'll need to be varnished. Varnishing will keep the insides from rotting, and the egg should dry out naturally over time—a period of years, apparently. Alternatively, you can remove the insides with a syringe, then seal the hole with a bit of white glue.

I was somewhat disappointed in my pysanky, but it's my own fault. I should have used beeswax, and I should have used more concentrated dyes. These were egg dyes and looked very rich on the packets, but I should maybe have used the cold-water dyes more commonly used for tie-dye and the like. I also should have left the eggs in the vinegar a little longer, I think, because there are some strange white scuff marks here and there that I think must be finger oils.




If I were to view this as a more fluid, less structured design idea, I might almost be able to live with these. But as pysanky, they're hilariously bad. I may try this again next Easter, once I've had more time to track down the proper materials, and learned how to use the tjanting or an real kistka.

On the other hand, maybe I'll just buy pysanky from people who actually know what they're doing.





Elephant Lore of the Day
One of the more unusual features of the Carpathian Mountains of the western Ukraine is an abandoned mountaintop observatory colloquially known as the White Elephant. Some speculate that the name comes from the shape of the observatory when covered in ice and snow; others suggest that its name derives from the fact that it was an expensive and ultimately impractical project.

Built of local sandstone—said to have been cemented with mortar strengthened with the yolks and whites of chicken eggs—the Marshal Jozef Pilsudski Astronomical and Meteorological Observatory was a massive construction project. It required tons of stone and equipment to be dragged to the top of Mount Black, and took nearly three years to complete.


Ruins of the Marshal Jozef Pilsudski Astronomical and
Meteorological Observatory, western Ukraine.
Photo: M. Chynko
Source: http://www.wumag.kiev.ua/index2.php?param=pgs20073/78

The observatory opened to much fanfare in 1938, but operated for only 14 months. As the Second World War intensified, the observatory's scientists decided that discretion was the better part of valour, and fled. The observatory's equipment was dismantled, ending up first in Hungary, then Vienna.

For more than 70 years, the White Elephant has been left to fall apart. The site has long been scavenged for the copper sheeting that once coated the roof, as well as floorboards, plumbing and wiring. Over the past decade, however, there has been talk of rebuilding the White Elephant. A possible Polish-Ukrainian initiative aims at restoring the observatory as a centre for the study of indigenous Carpathian flora.


The White Elephant in winter.
Source: http://www.tour-to-ukraine.com/en/articles/carpathians/175-observatory



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Thursday, 8 March 2012

Elephant No. 158: Batik




Lately I've run across several references to batik, so I thought I'd try it for today's elephant. Fair warning: this is not traditional batik with special wax, a tjanting and multiple dyes, but a simpler form of batik with crayons and one colour of dye. The type with multiple dyes would take longer than the time I have today, simply because of the time it takes to let the fabric dry in between dye baths—so crayons it is.

Although there is some debate about its origins, batik likely comes from the island of Java in Indonesia. It is also a traditional art in other Asian countries such as Malaysia, Japan, China, India, Sri Lanka and Singapore; African countries such as Egypt, Senegal and Nigeria; and the Central Asian republic of Azerbaijan. In its purest form, batik involves the hand-application of layers of clear wax, coupled with immersion in multiple dye baths, working from light to dark.

Traditional Javanese batik is rooted in Javanese cosmology. Three of the most commonly used colours—indigo, white and dark brown—represent the Hindu gods Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. Some patterns indicated lineage and family affiliation; others were reserved for the nobility. One type of batik—known as batik prada, or "gold batik"—included gold dust applied with an egg white glue. The gold would remain even when the cloth was laundered.


Sample of Javanese batik prada.
Source: http://fashion.dinomarket.com/ads/5201553/Jual-Kain-Batik-Prada-Floral-A-/


Dyeing textiles with a wax-resist technique is an ancient practice. Egyptian mummies from as far back as the fourth century B.C. were wrapped in linen that had been soaked in wax. The wax was then scratched with a sharp tool. In Java, China, India, Japan and West Africa, wax-resist fabric was produced at least as early as the seventh century A.D. In many cultures, batik draws on the natural world and everyday life for its inspiration. Flowers, fish, animals, people, and deities are common subjects.

In Europe, batik was not really known in the West until the 1817 publication of The History of Java, by Sir Stamford Raffles—who had been British governor of the island before Indonesia came under Dutch control in 1800. Over the next century or so, travellers to Southeast Asia would bring back samples of batik, and when batik was displayed at the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris, it became something of a craze.

As demand for batik grew, new manufacturing processes emerged—partly due to the Dutch, who had taken an active interest in promoting Indonesian batik. Indonesian batik eventually split into two types: batik cap (pronounced "batik chap"), which involves the use of copper printing blocks; and batik tulis (literally "written batik"), which is produced with the traditional hand-drawn technique. Interestingly, when batik was introduced to Malaysia in the 1920s by Indonesian immigrants, it was batik cap. The more traditional hand-drawn batik tulis was a much later "innovation".

During the nineteenth century, Javanese batik techniques had been introduced to West Africa by Dutch and English traders. Although peoples such as the Yoruba and Wolof were already familiar with wax-resist dyeing, Javanese influence led to the adoption of larger motifs, more colours and thicker lines.


Yoruba batik from Nigeria, where traditional indigo dyeing is also an art form.
Source: http://darlingcreations.com/wp/?page_id=959


In Azerbaijan, silk batik has been known for centuries. The technique originates in the Turkic village of Basgal in the centre of the country: a site which was once on the ancient trade route known as the Silk Road. Azerbaijani batik uses a block-printing technique. Following the fracturing of the U.S.S.R., Azerbaijani batik declined for a time, but has since been revived.

In India and other South Asian countries, batik involves very similar processes to Javanese batik, but is often more pictorial in nature. In China, batik is primarily produced by traditional cultures. Made almost exclusively for clothing, Chinese batik is produced by decorating hemp or cotton with hot wax, then dipping the fabric in indigo dye. Traditional patterns include flowers, dragons, and the phoenix.


Indian batik of elephant god Ganesha.
Source: http://www.dollsofindia.com/product/batik-paintings/
ganesha-elephant-headed-god-batik-painting-on-cotton-cloth-
QE57.html


Over the past fifty years or so, batik has found its way into cultures all over the world. Interest in traditional arts during the 1960s led to the rediscovery of batik in Western culture, as well as revived production in traditional batik-manufacturing countries. Today, batik is used to produce fabric for clothing, as well as table linens, wall hangings, upholstery fabric, and many household accessories. There are also a number of well-known batik painters around the world.

Depending on its quality and craftsmanship, batik can be relatively inexpensive (for factory-printed fabric with a batik pattern, but no wax) to several thousand dollars. The latter is generally batik tulis, which normally takes several months to produce.

Although the popularity of batik has had its ups and downs, batik is currently very  popular, particularly in Asia. In October 2009, UNESCO declared Indonesian batik a Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity, which comes with a requirement that Indonesia preserve this heritage. In response, the Indonesia government suggested that every Friday be "batik day", encouraging workers to wear batik on Fridays. Fashion designers have also embraced batik, incorporating it in everything from haute couture to uniforms for flight attendants.

Although the technique for making traditional batik is relatively straightforward, it is a labour- and time-intensive activity requiring considerable skill and patience. Starting with a piece of natural-fibre cloth, the artist uses a tjanting to apply liquid wax. The tjanting is a special tool with a small bowl to hold the liquid wax, and a fine spout or tip to drip or paint the wax onto the fabric. For repeating patterns, batik can also be produced with printing blocks made of wood, copper or brass. In this case, the block is dipped in liquid wax, then quickly applied to the fabric surface.

 
Traditional tjanting.
Source: http://www.mulberrysilks.co.uk/1mm-tjanting-tool-for-
batik-brass-bowl--wooden-handle-7-p.asp


Batik relies on the principle that adding wax to fabric will prevent the fabric from absorbing dye. This means that, wherever the wax has been applied, the dye will not be able to penetrate. The cloth under the first layer of wax will thus remain the colour of the original cloth (usually white).


Wooden batik printing blocks from Turkey.
Source: http://www.trocadero.com/thesilkroad/items/897630/en1.html


The wax is usually a mixture of beeswax and paraffin. The beeswax bonds well to the fabric, while the paraffin creates the characteristic cracks. The traditional proportion of beeswax to paraffin is three parts beeswax to one part paraffin.

Once the first layer of wax has been applied, the fabric is gently crumpled to crack the wax. The fabric is now immersed in a dye bath, using the lightest colour of dye first. The fabric will dye wherever there is no wax, including the cracks. The process is then repeated, with the artist painting over whatever parts he or she doesn't want dyed with the second colour, and so on until the desired number of dye colours has been used.

To remove the wax, the piece is either ironed between layers of paper, rinsed in hot water, or treated with dry-cleaning fluid.

Although I'd love to do traditional batik for today's elephant, there aren't enough hours in the day for me to dye things several times. So I'm reverting to a form of batik I once did as a child, involving coloured crayons "painted" onto a piece of cotton fabric, and a single dye bath.

To start, I cut a small piece of unbleached muslin. If I were doing traditional batik, I'd use white fabric, but since this is going to be completely coloured and dyed, I thought this fabric would be fine.

Most instructions suggest stretching the fabric over a canvas stretcher or other frame. This is primarily to keep the wax from sticking to whatever is underneath. I didn't really feel like doing that, so I just put my piece of fabric on top of a piece of glass. I also didn't bother to draw anything on the fabric, although most instructions will suggest that this is a good idea. This was either hubris or laziness on my part—or perhaps both—but it worked out well enough.




To melt the crayons, I pulled out the griddle I had used for my encaustic experiment experiment. I bought a bunch of small disposable tart tins and placed them on top. Since I was going to use low heat and was planning to work quickly, I didn't bother putting the tins in a water bath, although that wouldn't be a bad idea, to keep the wax from doing nasty things.





I chose a couple of greys, some pink, two greens, red, yellow and purple, thinking I might add a flower or two. When the batik is ironed, the colours of the crayons are what create the colours in the batik, substituting for several colours of dye.

For brushes, I used some inexpensive stiff synthetic brushes. I think I got all of these for $1.50, so they were quite disposable if I didn't feel like cleaning them. (I did clean them, however. This is as simple as pressing the brush into the griddle until any residual wax melts, then wiping it in a paper towel.)




I started the painting by sketching a loose elephant outline with grey crayon wax. I applied it a bit too thickly at first, which isn't really a good thing when using crayons, as it's more likely to flake off. It's better if the paint is liquid and applied relatively thinly. Oh well.




After this, I just kept adding more wax, using whatever colours I liked and layering them. I sometimes blended colours in the tins, cleaning my brush in between by running it along the surface of the griddle and wiping it on paper towels.

This was the final piece before I was ready to dye it.




And this was the reverse. It didn't look to me like there was enough saturation, but it's been so long since I've tried this that I didn't know if this would be a problem.




I chose what I thought would be a nice olive green for the dye.



Because this was enough dye for several pounds of fabric, and I only had a small square of muslin, I made a small batch. I think I added about a teaspoon (5 ml) of dye and a half-teaspoon or so (2 ml) of salt. The salt is to help the dye set. The dye crystals looked brown to me, but I thought maybe it would dye differently than it looked here.




I added a couple of litres of boiling water to dissolve the dye, and let it cool for a bit so that it wouldn't do something weird to the wax in my design. I crumpled my piece very gently, then dunked it into the dye for a couple of minutes, as I didn't want it to be too dark.

I was deeply disappointed when I pulled it out of the dye and rinsed it. Instead of a nice olive, I had an unattractive khaki colour. I was not pleased.





At this point, it was still wet, so I hung it to dry for a couple of hours.

The next step was to iron out the residual wax. To do this, I placed newspaper on my ironing board, with a sheet of white paper on top of the newspaper, then paper towels on top of that. I put my piece on top of all that, then reversed the order of the layers. Newspaper is used to cushion the piece and do some of the absorption; the white paper is to help with absorption and to keep the ink of the newspaper from imprinting on the design; and the paper towels do most of the absorption. Obviously, to keep the iron relatively clean, you don't want it ironing directly across the paper towels.

It took about fifteen minutes to iron out the wax. I used a firm hand, but pressed into the piece, rather than smoothing the iron across it. This both helps to remove as much wax as possible at a time, and helps to prevent smearing if your wax is too thick, as mine was.

The red virtually disappeared during the ironing process, which may be a function of its particular pigment. But the rest was pretty resilient. The oily look around the final elephant is residual oil from the crayons. And, although some of the wax looks like its still sitting on top of the fabric, it's actually ironed right through to the other side. To make sure, I even flipped it over and ironed the reverse.

I don't hate it, but I'm not particularly happy with the background colour. It makes the whole thing look a little dull, and the elephant doesn't pop as much as I expected it to. But it was an interesting exercise, and is both simple and relatively quick. The main issue is waiting for the piece to dry after it's been dyed.

I'll probably try this again, but next time I'll test the dye colour first. And, if I ever have a sixteen-hour day to play with, I may even give traditional multi-dye batik a try.






Elephant Lore of the Day
Long thought to be extinct, the Javan elephant may have been found again on Borneo. The Borneo pygmy elephant, long thought to be native to Borneo, may in fact be a remnant population of Javan elephants, accidentally saved from extinction by the Sultan of Sulu centuries ago.

Borneo pygmy elephants are found only on the northeastern tip of that island, and their origins have long been shrouded in mystery. Their appearance and behaviour differ from those of other Asian elephants, and scientists have always wondered why Borneo elephants have never spread beyond their small range.

In a 2008 article co-authored by the World Wildlife Fund, it was suggested that the Borneo pygmy elephant is a descendant of elephants brought to Borneo centuries ago by the Sultan of Sulu (now part of the Philippines). Elephants were common gifts among rulers for centuries, and were often shipped between islands throughout the Indonesian archipelago and other parts of Asia. The assumption is that these elephants may simply have been left behind in the Borneo jungle.

Elephants became extinct on Java in the eighteenth century, and were hunted to extinction on Sulu during the nineteenth century. If the Borneo pygmy elephants are actually Javan elephants, it would be the first known elephant translocation in history that has survived to modern times.

Part of the  mystery was solved in 2003, when DNA testing by Columbia University and the World Wildlife Fund determined that Borneo elephants were genetically distinct from mainland Asian elephants and Sumatran elephants. This left Java or Borneo itself as the most likely place of origin.

Today, there are only 1,000 of the elephants left in the wild, mostly in the Malaysian state of Sabah, which is in the northern part of the island of Borneo. Some of the elephants are being tracked with radio collars to help researchers study their behaviour. Unfortunately, the Borneo pygmy elephant prefers the same lowland habitat that is attractive to humans for timber, oil and rubber plantations, which makes its future uncertain.



Borneo pygmy elephant wearing radio collar.
Photo: Cede Prudente
Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/multimedia/pub/7775.php?from=112896



Elephant's World (Thailand)
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