Lien Metzelaar

A young widow with four small children to support and only a small pension from the Dutch government, Lien Metzelaar began designing batiks in 1880. Her unique sarongs were soon sold in the cosmopolitan cites of Batavia and Jakarta, with many examples making their way to the Netherlands. Metzelaar transformed the design of the kepala, the primary motif band of the sarong, here a grouping of poppies on a blue ground. Metzelaar’s style is so iconic that contemporary Dutch wax-printing firms such as Vlisco and Fentener van Vlissingen still find inspiration in it.

By 1900, batik artists had developed a repertoire of styles that combined colors, motifs, and layouts to appeal to each of the many cultures found in Java. The combination of strong red, dark green, and blue, seen in this sarong, was preferred by Javanese of Arab descent.

The large floral composition seen in the kepala (head) and badan (field) is a variant of the bouquet designs introduced in the late 19th century by Indonesian-European batik artists and entrepreneurs. By about 1910, many workshops began producing simplified batiks such as this one, in which the same floral design was

used in both the kepala and the badan.