Hidden Treasure: The Rediscovery Of A Royal Batik Collection

During the course of establishing the Queen Sirikit Museum of Textiles, the authors and their colleagues were privileged to be taken into the Inner Court in the heart of Bangkok’s Grand Palace.  Among the fascinating collection of historic court textiles, Western accessories, and royal accoutrements dating from the reign of King Rama V (r. 1868-1910) were a large number of Indonesian batiks (a wax-resist patterning technique for which Java was, and is, renowned). The only information given at the time of our visit was that the batiks had been collected by the king on one or more trips to Java during his long reign. Placed in storage upon His Majesty’s death in 1910, they have been virtually unknown except to a very few Thai scholars close to the court. They have never been exhibited publicly and to our knowledge no outsiders have seen them.[1] A recent count has placed the number of extant pieces at 304. This article contains the first published photographs of examples from this important royal collection.

[1] Even the highly respected Southeast Asian textile authority, Dr. Mattiebelle Gittinger, who was told about             the collection in the late 1980s, never actually saw it (personal email communication, 9 January 2014).