From imagination to creation: the making of hand-carved Balinese pots

Gardensia's long-time friend and partner, Handri, has gone into the pot carving business.  He's teaming up with a master carver and his sons to produce exceptionally well-crafted stone pots for Gardensia.  We've captured the pot carving process in photos so you can see the making of the gorgeous pots you find at Gardensia.

Looking at photos for inspiration

Mapping out the pot design 
(Handri looking on at left)

Sketching the design on the pot with charcoal

Handri watching the master carver's son 

Crane and lotus sketching on urn

Finished crane and lotus urn

Adding finishing touches with a smile

Working in the carving "studio"

Sketching the floral vine circle design

Master carver Wayan beginning to carve

Rough hewn floral vine circle design

Finished floral vine circle urn

Master carver Wayan (left), his son Made (middle), and Gardensia's partner Handri (right)

Treasure shopping

Shopping for Gardensia is one of the great joys Sekti has running our business.  Searching up and down side streets, under and behind tables, statues, and what-else-have-you, then finding a fascinating artifact, natural specimen, or piece of carved art that we couldn't have envisioned before seeing, is an inspiring reminder of the infinite variety of nature's beauty, and limitless creativity of human imagination.

One of our regular sources is a petrified wood showroom run by a young business school graduate and his computer programmer-wife from Jakarta. The store's refreshing air-conditioning provides a rare retreat during shopping marathons in Indonesia's sticky-sweaty tropical heat.  This past shopping trip we were lucky to find a large selection of gorgeous black and white petrified wood pieces, as we know they get snatched-up by Italian importers with barely a glance at the price.  Being a bit more budget-conscious, we asked to meet with the owner, who agreed to a reasonable deal for a fellow Jakarta native.

Sekti selecting petrified wood pieces at a showroom

At the other end of the spectrum is one of our favorite stone sellers.  Their “gallery” is a large open field bordered by a stand of bamboo, rice fields and a creek.  But don’t let this description give you the impression of an idyllic setting to leisurely admire and choose select specimens of artfully carved buddhas and other statues tinted bright green with moss.  The field is so infested with mosquitoes that rather than greeting customers with chilled bottles of tea, without warning and without prior consent, staff spray arriving customers head to toe with a bottle of mosquito repellent.

Selecting statues in the mosquito field

If you went shopping in Indonesia and only visited the big establishments that buy or consign pieces from artists and workshops, you would miss some of the most interesting treasures and best deals to be found. Sekti and long-time friend Handri spend day after day, cruising the streets of Java and Bali, jumping out of the car at promising storefronts, (or pushing the car to service stations when it repeated  breakes down), and scanning the little shops for unique and interesting treasures.  When something catches their interest, if the seller relates an story of the article’s provenance, it may make the difference between a sale and moving on.

Sekti and long-time friend, Handri

Sekti tells this story of visiting a couple of smaller shops last December:

Timor bench outside a closed shop

"For several days Handri and I repeatedly drove past a beautiful Timor bench sitting on the sidewalk in front of a store, but every time we went by, the shop was closed. Finally, when we stopped in at the textile shop next door, the owner told us, 'Oh, he's lazy. You never know when he'll be open,' but she agreed to give him a call for us.

"About 20 minutes later, a man with a fishing pole slung over his shoulder and a tackle bag fastened around his waist hopped off the back of a motor bike and opened the rolling doors. In the end, we bought not only the bench, but several Sumba guardian statues, a pair of shell necklaces from Lombok and a 10-foot woven ikat textile from Sumba. You'd hope he found that worth interrupting his fishing trip.

"About a mile down the road we stopped at a Timor woodworking shop. The proprietor demonstrated the traditional carving technique on an aged wood slab table.  As he tapped a chisel with a block of wood, the familiar concentric geometric shapes and layered ridges slowly took form.


Traditional Timor carving technique

Wood urn from Borneo 

"While we browsed around the store, men who had been hanging around on the street when we arrived began riding up on motorcycles to show us artifacts they had for sale. (The store owner would get a small commission for any items purchased on his property.) One entrepreneur offered a shaman's book of mantras inscribed on lontar palm fronds. Another had the skull of a crocodile. As the shop filled with vendors and their merchandise, more sellers lined up outside for a turn to display their wares. One rode up on the back of a motorbike holding a 4-foot wooden balance worn smoothly over decades of use with leather sling for weighing infants. As intriguing as it was, we had to pass, so the man went to the back of the line. When he got his next turn, he showed us a carved bamboo hunting blowpipe with poisonous darts. This and other various knives and weapons we declined. One item we couldn't resist was a 2 1/2 foot wooden urn from Borneo which arrived hanging off the back of a motor bike tied from the rear grab bar. Another piece which was tough to let pass was a 2-foot diameter menacing Timor guardian head carved from a single piece of wood."

There is no such thing as a credit line with our suppliers, so, not surprisingly, the hardest part of shopping for Gardensia is staying within budget and gambling that if we buy it, we won't find something we want more the next day, or that if we don't get it right then, someone else with deeper pockets won't buy it as soon as we leave. Besides having a keen eye for spotting great finds, Sekti also has a flair for bargaining which seems to involve a big smile and an unprovoked laugh that suggests a party more than a business negotiation. Then again, this is what he loves doing, so for him, it is a party, and a 20-foot container full of presents is on the way.

Bali: Art, Ritual, Performance - MATCHA @ the Asian Art Museum

I had a great time with co-workers at The Asian tonight: a Bali booster shot. 
  

Banten (palm frond offering with flowers) made at MATCHA

My daughter went straight to the craft table to make a banten palm frond offering.

Granted, the staples we used to hold it together are not as elegant as the mini-skewer lidih coconut frond spines used in Bali, and the silk flowers don't have the scent of real blossoms, but it was close enough to remind us of the offerings at Besaki mother temple in Bali last Dec.

Offerings at Besaki, Bali

Fancy cut flower shaped palm frond offerings

Square offerings and priest's bell

My daughter thought she recognized the priestess we met at Besaki in one of the movie clips playing in the galleries.

Priestess at Besaki mother temple, Bali

Besaki priestess helping Livi re-tie her sarong.

Next, a bite at the museum cafe -- we picked a tasty udon bowl rather than the lamb sate sampler plate.  If you want great Indonesian food, go to Sekti's favorite: Jayakarta on University in Berkeley.  Given my cooking, I think they're the only reason he's managed to stick around in the States this long...though I can produce a good pot of what we call sop Ibu (Mother's soup) - taught to me by Sekti's mom.

Our thoughtful friend reserved a front row seat on the floor in the Samsung Hall for us to watch the dance performance by Gadung Kasturi.   Director Kompiang Metri-Davies (a friend and customer at Gardensia) and her co-dancers were enchanting to watch in the last piece, Legong Supraba Duta. The flick of Kompiang's hands, eyes and head were smooth and graceful without sacrificing crispness, and she tops it off with that provocative Balinese half-wink smirk followed by the flash of a super wide-eyed glare. Bette Davis got nothin' on Kompiang!

Since I don't have a video of Gadung Kasturi's performance, here's a clip of Legong that I took in Ubud, Bali.

The dancer in red is dancing the same Condong charater/role that Kompiang's daughter danced, third piece into the program.   The dancers in the video clip are mature and skillful in their dancing, but to me, it's is even more enthralling to watch young girls like Kompiang's daughter perform this dance -- as it is traditionally performed by pre-adolescent girls and has an air of eager energy and mixed with innocence.

Lastly, to the exhibit:
Probably my favorite items were the two early 20th century photos of Legong dancers in gallery 3.  (See one in the rotating banner photos on the exhibit web page.) It's interesting to compare the costumes in the photos with the standard Legong costumes of today.

Also high on my list were:
(You can't take pictures in the gallery, but here are some representative photos from Gardensia)

Rain drums at Gardensia

1,000 year old bronze rain drum head in gallery 1.  (You can get a whole one -- though not 1,000 years old -- at Gardensia),

the carved door in gallery 2 (Balinese doors get snatched up at Gardensia as soon as we get them),

Balinese door with wayang figures at Gardensia

Balinese door at Gardensia

and the bale (pavillion) in front of gallery 3.  

Ceiling of Balinese pavilion (bale) at Besaki

Javanese carved teak pavilion (joglo)

Ceiling of Javanese pavilion (joglo) at Gardensia

If you have a hankering to sit (or lie down) in a pavilion like this, feel free to stop by Gardensia to take a break among artifacts from Bali and all over the Indonesian archipelago.  Some people tell us it's like visiting a museum, except you can touch, sit on, and pick up the items (OK, some of the items. You won't want to be hefting stone Buddha statues).  Not only that, we have plants and running fountains to give the feeling you're in the lush tropics.  

I have only one constructive comment about the exhibit: the decorations in the North Court looked sparse and dry.  If you've been to Bali you know that everywhere you look -- every inch -- looks alive and vibrant.  I would have preferred all the flags, umbrella, janur (woven offerings), and statues to be clustered in one area (e.g., by the pavilion) with some flowers and plants and a fountain (would introducing wet and living material in the building be dangerous to the collections?)  Then, of course, if you really like something at Gardensia, you can buy it and take it home to enjoy every day.   (If you can't live in Bali, next best thing is to bring some Bali home.)

If you missed yesterday's Sacred Offerings MATCHA, there will be more throughout the summer, and the Bali exhibit runs through September.  It's worth the visit!  [Oh, darn, there will be so much to see in the upcoming months that I meant to renew our membership to the museum last night, but they had to usher me out of the galleries as the doors were closing, so I forgot.]

Gardensia's Inspiration

During this past December's trip to Bali, on our first morning in Ubud, after the morning downpour had cleared to a pleasant muggy shower, we headed out on a mini-pilgrimage to the fountains at Goa Gadjah, the Elephant Cave.

fountains at Goa Gadjah, Bali

Braving the rain rewarded us with a peaceful sanctuary all to ourselves with the welcoming caretakers.  We took cover inside the mouth of the cave (literally) and tried out the meditation nooks, until the stuffy heat steamed the camera lense and we were desperate to shed our plastic rain coats. 

Beyond the fountains and the cave, we descended a flight of stairs under dripping trees and around tangled roots, into a moss-coated ravine, to the foot of a bursting waterfall to see ancient, enigmatic carved stone relics from the 11th century.

Lisa & Sekti at Borobudur monument, Central Java

Back in 2003, Sekti and I had struggled over what kind of enterprise we could embark upon that would incorporate our ties to Indonesia, as well as Sekti's artistic talent and our interest in culture and anthropology.  We rejected the idea of distributing the inexpensive handicrafts sold to tourists on the streets of Yogya and Ubud, feeling they didn't represent Indonesia's rich artistic history.  One evening, leafing through an Indonesia coffee table photo book, we spotted a photo of the Goa Gadjah fountains.

We recognized without hesitation that this fabulous tradition of stone carving, preserved in the oldest religious monuments and still passed down and practiced in roadside workshops, was the facet of Indonesia that we wanted to support and share.                                                    



Making a business of moving around stone statuary certainly hasn't been an easy path, but we love the incredible artistry of each piece, the permanence of the material (especially stone erupted from Java's volcanoes), and the genre's crucial place in the region's heritage.  We have deliberately avoided buying antique stone carvings because we feel they are national treasures that belong to (and in) Indonesia. We want to support today's stoneworkers as they continue the tradition and create more objects of beauty.  (Once they've been outside a few seasons in the tropics, they become aged with moss, anyway.)

Of course, there are also pieces made of bronze, clay, teak, and other wood, that we can't resist, but as long as Sekti's back holds out, we'll continue schleping stone in our containers.



How many people does it take to load one Gardensia pot into a truck?



I almost went to Thailand...

...in the summer 1988 for my junior year abroad.  But at the urging of the insightful and supremely graceful Judy Mitoma, I ventured to Indonesia instead -- following the footsteps of many esteemed ethnomusicologists before me -- to study gamelan and dance.

our cook and housekeeper

All the Education Abroad Program students in Yogya were put up in faculty housing near Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) for the summer.  Our lodgings epitomized tropical indoor-outdoor living, with tile floors cool to bare feet, wet bathrooms where you created refreshing waterfalls by scooping pitchers of cold water over your head, plantation shutters and doors, verandas, and an open-air kitchen with a fantastic cook to keep us full on Indonesian food.




It wasn't for dissatisfaction that my UCLA cohort and I were eager to leave as soon as we'd put down our bags, it was the fact that we had an invitation to live at the home of our Javanese dance teacher from UCLA.  His daughter and her classmates at the Institut Seni Indonesia (ISI) arts school lived there, and we were welcomed as additional boarders.  Juliette and I eagerly headed off on becak (pedicab) to meet our soon-to-be roommates:  a congenial group of Javanese dancers.  We'd also soon come to know their clove-smoking, bohemian artist boyfriends, as well.

It wasn't until we were back in a becak, headed into evening, that we wondered what was the address of our interim lodgings. The becak driver peddled us across town toward campus, then back and forth all around the university while we searched for something familiar looking.  Both of us had taken Javanese and Balinese dance and music classes over the past year, but neither of us could speak any Indonesian to help get us back into our beds.  I'm sure the driver had wanted to dump us out of his cart and abandon us on a random street corner, but I guess we somehow found the way back to the house, with our first Indonesian lesson well-learned: It's not enough to know where you're going, you have to know where you're coming from.

I could say that first night was an allegory for the next couple decades of my life: wandering around searching for where I came from, but that wouldn't really be correct.  However, I do think that the lesson I learned is symbolic of Indonesia. Indonesians ask incessantly "Dari mana?" to find out either "Where are you from?" or "Where have you been?" It strikes me funny, now, that even when the situation clearly indicated the questioner wanted to know what country I was from, I stubbornly told them where I'd just been because I bristled at always being seen as a foreigner -- someone out of place. Now I know that Indonesians ask, "Where are you from?" not just of tourists and foreigners, but each other as well, and I can appreciate the question as a way to set context. In a country of dozens upon dozen of traditionally distinct cultures, complete with their own languages, dances, costumes, food and mannerisms, Indonesians make a point of knowing where they come from.

~~~~~~

Intensive language class, 8 hours per day, at UGM (say oo-gay-M) was good for my Indonesian, but meeting Sekti was better.  I practiced flute nightly in a little traditional-styled pendopo with a ceiling of angled wooden beams and clay tile roof that was perched on top of my boarding home. One evening, Sekti stopped me at the bottom of the outdoor stairs to introduce himself and ask if I'd play "The Fool on the Hill" with his Beatles cover band at a local club.  Rehearsals led to morning jogs, led to gifts of nangka (jackfruit), led to motorbike lessons.  Over the next year, Sekti and I drove on his red Honda motorbike to visit temples, nature reserves, beaches, villages, and eventually, before my year was up, his parents.

Lisa & Sekti at a candi in Central Java, 1988

Lisa and Sekti - backyard bamboo forest 1990

After an uncertain goodbye, many love letters, my graduation, reunion in Java via the Darmasiswa study program, Sekti's graduation, two lavish traditional wedding ceremonies, a state-side MBA, a house near Berkeley, and two kids, my husband Sekti and I are now bringing our girls "back home" to meet their paternal grandparents.  Our thirteen year-old has pictures of herself mosquito-bitten and bathing in buckets at her grandparents house in Jakarta, but really, it's all as new to her as it is for her 7-year old sister.  It's exciting for me to re-live through my teenager the marvel of experiencing Indonesia for the first time.  I'm proud of the photographer's eye she's honed that lets her see and feel the wonder I felt nearly a quarter century ago.

~~~~~

A couple of days ago Sekti jokes that I'm more Indonesian than Chinese.  He says this now, after all those early years I struggled as a second-time adolescent: having emerged only a few years prior from the insecurities of high school, having to learn how to act appropriately in central Java's culture of royalty-entrenched formalities, desperately trying to fit in, to speak fluent Indonesian without an accent. Actually, it wasn't that radical a statement, anyway, because even though I check the Chinese ethnicity box, I've never felt very Chinese, occupying an untethered hapa middle-ground, instead.  Two years of university classes couldn't make up for only hearing Chinese spoken -- just barely spoken with one word responses from my dad -- during occasional family gatherings. One summer tour to China during high school, where I couldn't talk to anyone and no one acted remotely interested in talking to me anyway, didn't make me feel closer to my roots.  Sekti says this now, following my first return to Indonesia after a 10-year absence, when I no longer feel the need to categorize my identity, when middle age (41 is already middle age?) has finally given me enough time with myself to feel comfortable as the typical atypical Bay Arean-American that I am.

I realize this as I walk the streets of Ubud by myself.  Sekti is out shopping for the store, finding treasures of the kind we admire in our coffee table books and the South-East Asia collection of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco (also check out Bali: Art, Ritual, Performance opening Feb 25 - Sept 11, 2011!).  The girls are with my sister, niece, and nephew swimming at the hotel.  I'm shopping for Christmas presents that I'll give the next morning, wrapped in banana leaves, adorned with flowers like the offerings placed on the ground, in shrines, on statues, at intersections, everywhere.

banana leaf wrapped Christmas presents

Back in the 90s, when I led art tours in Java and Bali, a kind American couple thanked me for being their guide with a generous tip, then added that they weren't sure why I had rejected America, but they wished me the best in my adopted country. I had protested the idea that by embracing Indonesia I was rejecting America.  I don't recall any major changes in my outlook over the years, but this trip back to my second home has given me a time-lapse perspective to recognize that I now feel at ease with my American-ness in a way that I didn't before.  I have no compulsion to prove my Indonesian-ness, and simply enjoy a deep connection to the country through my family and our love of the many facets of Indonesian artistic and cultural expression.  I'm comfortable in both and in-between.

This blog will tell stories of living in the balance between America and the archipelago.

Lisa & Sekti - Lombok, 1988

Lisa & Sekti - Bali, 2010