Androsia
Encyclopedia
Androsia is a type of textiles
produced by the Androsia Batik
Factory on Andros Island, Bahamas. It is hand made and has been manufactured on Andros since 1973 by Bahamians. This type of fabric is considered one of Andros' national treasures and won the Silver Jubilee award in 1998.
s are created from locally harvested sponge
s and fashioned into the whimsical shapes Androsia is famous for. Typically these are shapes organic in nature, for example conch
shells, hibiscus flowers, and native coral
heads. The stencils are dipped in heated wax and then hand pressed onto the fabric. The fabric is next soaked in dye long enough for the fabric to absorb the color. Typically Androsia is brightly colored, with hot pink and purple being two very common colors. During the dying process the wax prevents the dye from adhering to the fabric. These patches of white retain the shape of the stencils. Finally the cloth is boiled to remove the wax.
Fabric
A fabric is a textile material, short for "textile fabric".Fabric may also refer to:*Fabric , the spatial and geometric configuration of elements within a rock*Fabric , a nightclub in London, England...
produced by the Androsia Batik
Batik
Batik is a cloth that traditionally uses a manual wax-resist dyeing technique. Batik or fabrics with the traditional batik patterns are found in Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan, China, Azerbaijan, India, Sri Lanka, Egypt, Nigeria, Senegal, and Singapore.Javanese traditional batik, especially from...
Factory on Andros Island, Bahamas. It is hand made and has been manufactured on Andros since 1973 by Bahamians. This type of fabric is considered one of Andros' national treasures and won the Silver Jubilee award in 1998.
Creation
StencilStencil
A stencil is a thin sheet of material, such as paper, plastic, or metal, with letters or a design cut from it, used to produce the letters or design on an underlying surface by applying pigment through the cut-out holes in the material. The key advantage of a stencil is that it can be reused to...
s are created from locally harvested sponge
Sea sponge
Sponges are animals of the phylum Porifera . Their bodies consist of jelly-like mesohyl sandwiched between two thin layers of cells. While all animals have unspecialized cells that can transform into specialized cells, sponges are unique in having some specialized cells, but can also have...
s and fashioned into the whimsical shapes Androsia is famous for. Typically these are shapes organic in nature, for example conch
Conch
A conch is a common name which is applied to a number of different species of medium-sized to large sea snails or their shells, generally those which are large and have a high spire and a siphonal canal....
shells, hibiscus flowers, and native coral
Coral
Corals are marine animals in class Anthozoa of phylum Cnidaria typically living in compact colonies of many identical individual "polyps". The group includes the important reef builders that inhabit tropical oceans and secrete calcium carbonate to form a hard skeleton.A coral "head" is a colony of...
heads. The stencils are dipped in heated wax and then hand pressed onto the fabric. The fabric is next soaked in dye long enough for the fabric to absorb the color. Typically Androsia is brightly colored, with hot pink and purple being two very common colors. During the dying process the wax prevents the dye from adhering to the fabric. These patches of white retain the shape of the stencils. Finally the cloth is boiled to remove the wax.