Afif Syakur is a prominent Indonesian batik artist, whose creations employs classical batik motifs and traditions, revitalising them for the contemporary wearer. These four proposed batik tulis textiles pieces are some of his creations, with designs made form the nitik style. The classical batik motifs he employed in these pieces include Garis Miring, Nitik, Ceplok and Semen. This piece, Nitik Krempel Ceplok Nogo, also features naga motifs.Nitik employs small dots and dashes to compose complex geometric forms, an extremely intricate and time-consuming method of creating motifs. Nitik comprises of the root word titik which means dots in Malay.It has been suggested that the nitik technique was developed to emulate the visuals of woven fabric, with the dots and dashes creating the impression of stitched threads going up and down the textile. Another theory is that nitik is derived from early batik that were produced by applying wax using sticks instead of canting, resulting in the appearance of broken lines. Lastly, it has also been suggested that the nitik technique was employed to emulate the fragmented lines of patola textiles from India.
