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A batik tulis cloth could take up to 40 days to complete. Really high-standard batik to/is can take as long as 6 months, especially if deep-toned vegetable dyes are used which take time for the colors to come out. Batik, when new, is stiff to the touch. Until recently there's been a tendency away from the time-consuming painstaking batik tulis work towards the quicker but usually inferior stampedprocess Icap) which can be produced on a larger commercial scale. But as the knowledge and sensitivity of tourists towards Indonesian art forms increases, hand-drawn batik is now always in demand. more simple and imitative designs. Copper stamps (cap) are used to impress wax patterns onto the fabric. Caps are made from strips of metal and wire carefully soldered together, in themselves collector's items and art objects. This process, in use since 1840, is making batik more and more a male industry, a craft of young men.