Cotton Fent Fabric as an Alternate Material for Batik Making

Abstract

The art of batik making is very unique and labour intensive, yet culturally philosophically embedded in every piece and style of fabric decoration, and therefore must be sustained at all costs. The motivation for this study was due to the limited availability of quality fabrics, ever increasing cost of mercerized cotton and shedda in the local market and the need to find an alternate yet durable fabric for the batik industry. The objective of the study was to ascertain whether cotton fent as a substitute is durable, for batik making with the same characteristics as mercerized cotton. The art studio-based design was used. Purposive sampling was used to segregate the collected sampled cotton fent fabrics. These were evaluated through a pre-tested questionnaire by ten batik experts from Kumasi who had sound knowledge of batik making. The location of the study was the Asfatex batik studio due to its well-equipped facilities. The results of the study indicated sharpness, clarity, evenness, overall appearance and depth of colour in fent batik. Using the plain mercerized cotton as a standard for the comparison, cotton fent batik fabric used was rated the best. The possibility of using fent cotton as an alternate less costly readily applicable fabric for batik making was confirmed irrespective of the initial characteristics of varied pigment-coloured screen prints outlook. This project, recommends that batik makers explore it further for its artistic and economic development in Ghana and additionally advocate for scientific laboratory studies on cotton fent fabrics for other possible outcomes.