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?