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Samar Hassanien Brings Back Ancient Egyptian Batik Art


Sun 28 Apr 2019 | 05:28 PM
Salma Yassin

By Pasant Elzaitony

Samar Hassanien, an Egyptian Batik designer, managed to bring back the ancient Egyptian Batik art that depends mainly on fabrics’ typography using pigments and wax together.

After she graduated from faculty of art education, Hassanien worked for a while in ceramics and candles’ designs then she finally decided to specialize in “Batik”.

[caption id="attachment_48062" align="aligncenter" width="650"] Samar Hassanien, an Egyptian Batik designer[/caption]

She merged this art in fashion designs and used it to decorate home curtains, cautions and lampshades.

[caption id="attachment_48079" align="aligncenter" width="350"] Creative Batik curtains[/caption]

Challenges

It hasn’t been a smooth path, as it was hard for Hassanien to find fixed pigments to use in her work.

After awhile, a friend told her about a professional pigment type by which she was able to introduce creative designs.

The Artist Sami Amin was her first client who bought adorable home curtains and some fabrics used in his hand-made bags.

Because it’s an ancient art, Hassanien usually inspires her recent designs from old fashion like peasant smocks.

[caption id="attachment_48063" align="aligncenter" width="650"] A smock designed by Hassanien[/caption]

Typography techniques

A typography for a piece of cloth is usually done after covering the whole area that shouldn’t be colored by wax.

[caption id="attachment_48064" align="aligncenter" width="350"] The wax used in typography[/caption]

Then, the fabric is dipped in light color until it’s completely soaked up.

After that, the piece of cloth should be dried then put in a hot water to get rid of wax.

[caption id="attachment_48065" align="aligncenter" width="350"] Dipping fabrics in colors[/caption]

This process is repeated many times to color other parts of the same cloth item till the artist gets the final desired shape.

Foreigners in love with Batik

Hassanien pointed out that foreigners are most likely to buy her products as they are impressed by her work, that’s why she used to holding her exhibitions in the French and British clubs.

Training Workshops

As a pioneer in Batik art in Egypt, Hassanien holds regular training workshops for Egyptians and foreigners from Germany and England.

[caption id="attachment_48066" align="aligncenter" width="350"] Workshops[/caption]

Batik Art in Pharaohs’ Era

It’s worth mentioning that Batik art has first emerged since the time of Egyptian pharaohs to decorate the fabrics used in wrapping mummies.

Then, it was transferred to the ancient state and was pretty known in some countries like Japan, Indonesia, India and South Africa.

Modern Batik

At the beginning, Batik was only applied on cotton fabric, but now it became possible for artists to deal with other textures like silk, satin, chiffon and crepe

[gallery size="medium" ids="48067,48068,48069,48070,48071,48072,48073,48074,48075,48076,48077,48078"]

Contributed by Salma Yassin