Garut, a small city 4 hours from Jakarta by road, is known to be a mountainous area where most of the people work as farmer, traditional weaving and leather craft. Recent years, another home industry re-surface again in a new height, that is traditional silk weaving.
The new creative zone is known as Kampung Tenun Garut (Garut Weaving Village) at Panawuan village, Sukajaya, Tarogong Kidul, Garut.
The initiative is a collaboration from PGN (Perusahaan Gas Negara) and CTI (Cita Tenun Indonesia) with Galeri Sutra Ikat Garut, Hendar Rogesta
This house is a housing for the staff and a shop for the fabric showcase
Many workers came from around the village. The ladies who do the dying process sometimes bring their work home. The dying is done by hand and it takes approx. 2 weeks for the whole batch.
The threads are tied like the photo above, to cover some parts for later to be dyed with different colors.
Like so there are already 2 colours, dark green and red and in the process to apply the 3rd colour. The colouring use chemical to get that bright vibrant colour but very often they opt for natural dye instead, for example from fruits, vegetables and flowers.
25% of the silk threads are made locally, but the other 75% are still imported from China. Although sometimes the price and the availability are not enough for the market demand. In the hope to fill the demand of the the industry, there are collaboration to increase the silk worm by expanding the mulberry farm where they cultivate the silk.
After colouring, the silk threads are spin into tubes of threads in the small factories scattered between houses and rice fields.
The weaving process with traditional weaving tool (ATBM, Alat Tenun Bukan Mesin) that still use bi-pedal, wooden mechanism and the weaver’s hands to weave thread by thread.
A more geometric pattern and a little bit 3d weaving to make the fabric kind of furry. This one starts of the off white colour and later will be dyed with monochromatic colour of the choosing.
Another sample, this one is weaving colour by colour tread to make a more complex pattern and combination of colour as oppose to the monochromatic one. Of course this one is more expensive with its own ingenuity.
On average, the process takes about 2-3 months from the dying the silk thread to the weaving to produce about 2-3 fabric with the length of 2-2.5 metres for 1 motif. The more complex the pattern, the longer and more expensive it’s going to be.
Traditionally, Garut pattern is famous for the colourful flowers motifs. The motifs are taken from the surrounding natural flowers, plants, fruits and vegetables.
Just name some flowers like butterfly pea, blue pea, cordofan pea and asian pigeon wings, periwinkle, gambri flower, wijayakusuma flower, etc.
After all, Garut is also known as flowers city.
Address:
Jl. Pembangunan Kampung Panawuan no. 55
Kelurahan Sukajaya kecamatan Tarogong Kidul
Kabupaten Garut 44151
Mobile phone: 085223351959 | Email: www.familygarut@yahoo.com
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