Bangkok-born, London-based textile designer Lisa King always knew her Indonesian mother was an avid collector, from kimonos to Japanese crockery and furniture. But after spending six years sorting through her prized possessions following her death, she discovered there was one more surprise. “Last January, the warehouse that was storing some of her stuff was like, ‘Oh, we forgot about this container’ and it was 100 boxes of southeast Asian textiles,” King recounts over the phone. “And I was like, ‘Oh my god, mum.’ This is so typical of my Asian mother.”
The timing was apt, as King had recently begun incorporating batik—the Indonesian art of using wax to dye textiles and create prints—into her own work. “Suddenly, I’d been given this archive—what do I do with it? Am I allowed to cut these things up?” the designer says of the 500-odd piece batik collection, featuring sarongs, kains (another cloth wrapped to make a skirt), and selendangs (a shoulder cloth). “It’s pieces my grandmother would wear, that my great-grandmother would wear. My mother would go to Indonesia every year and buy a suitcase full of batiks from artisans.”
King began consulting with batik experts, including curators at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Indonesian Embassy, to decide what to do with the vast array of fabrics. While there were some museum-worthy pieces that needed to be preserved, she was keen to ensure the textiles would have a second life. “It kind of became apparent to me that this collection of fabrics needed to be seen,” she continues. “We agreed that if they just sat in a box or in a museum, they would disappear and become a lost art only meant for people that frequent museums, really.”
