As a young girl in Malaysia, Chandra had to learn batik at school. It was a compulsory part of her education: from the age of 14, all girls learnt the traditional methods of wax-resist dyeing and painting for three years, then sat an exam in batik at 17. The learning was hard. With very little instruction, the girls were expected to prepare boiling wax, paint with delicate tools, and fix the work with chemical solutions. Not something any school in the western world would allow.

Chandra explained how significant colour and design are in Malaysian batik, and how important it is to keep to the traditional patterns, with names like Paddy Field, Fishing Village and Rubber Plant. She also had us laughing at her first encounters with English weather and the English way of life: hailstones, she pointed out, look just like sago pudding falling from the sky.

Chandra’s husband Richard demonstrated the technique, showing the group how to use a canting to apply hot wax to silk and then fill in areas with paint. The session finished with questions and a chance to buy Chandra’s work. Chandra once described herself as a frog under a coconut shell. She is now an artist in traditional Malaysian batik, and an accomplished speaker.