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Over centuries batik industry in Indonesia has been transforming from a spare-time nontradable activity of peasant community into an interregional mass production industry. Initially, batik making was used to be a kind of women’s leisure activity to produce handmade clothing for domestic purpose while waiting for harvesting period of agriculture land cultivation. Then it turned into a small household traditional industry around 16th century to supply the increasing demand of batik clothing for both Keraton (traditional monarchy) family and ordinary people. Later, Keraton-oriented batik product was recognised batik Keraton (court batik) and peopleoriented one was batik saudagaran (merchant batik). Following the inception of printing technology broadly used in textile industry in the early 20th century, the process of batik industrialisation led by a small number of large batik firms grew rapidly to compete with traditional batik makers who kept using canting (a pen stylus tool) and cap (a stamping tool). The co-existence of traditional and modern batik industry is advantageous for fulfilling such a nationwide growing market demand since the use of printing technology could overcome batik supply shortcoming by traditional batik makers. On the other hand, this industrialisation process has endangered the socio-cultural preservation of traditional batik making due to the decreasing number of qualified traditional batik makers. In 1970s onwards, the domination of printing batik products devastated traditional batik firms, creating extensive job losses and thereafter a lost generation of traditional batik makers.

This research hence is to question how the local …