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INDONESIAN CRAFTS
| Like any culture's artifacts, Indonesia exhibits
their own idiosyncracies. Indonesian crafts
are spurred by a strong and frequently unconscious
awareness of their intrinsic spiritual value
which is inseparable from the life of the
community. It revolved around establishing a balance between the micro-and macrocosms through intricate ceremonies and rituals. So, all creative endeavours, including crafts, evolved as part of this mystical religious life, a phenomenon that persists to this day. Indonesians also have a penchant for minute details. In Bali, for instance, you can go to the most commercial little food stall or place an order at a big warehouse, or visit an artisan who is retired and out of the main stream of commercialism, and yet, you never fail to see the little offering. It is side by side with the work. That is their greatest strength, which fuels their greatest artistic temperament. This has lead to a wealth of embellishment in the region's crafts, an extravaganza of ornamentation covering every surface inch that harks back to primordial animism, subsequently enriched by Buddhism and Hinduism with their outpouring of mythical imagery and their concept of kingship and the court. Such royal establishments needed all kinds of ceremonial objects for religion and war, for births, weddings and funerals, dowries and gifts, for dancer's costumes and props, for furnishings and weavings or Batiks worn by the courtly class. Later, with its prohibition of human or animal portrayal, Islam shifted the design emphasis on floral and other organic motifs. Indonesian crafts are quintessentially communal. You across a village and suddenly, there is inventory lined up in these long rows, with women and children painting, sitting in a big circles, ... little kids doing the simplest parts and better artists doing the finishing works. And in front room is the master carver's opus, which has been working on for six months. However, just as tourism can be a boon and a curse simultaneously, so too with souvenirs, which can range from cutesy to the fine object. It is up to the buyers. The question is that will there be enough demand, enough people who support quality? It is important to take a position for high-end crafts because, should crafts go out of spiritual ceremonial realm and the focus become more commercial, what reasons do we have to produce something that takes three months or a year? With increasing emphasis on speed and production, measures should be taken both by the Indonesian government and collaborating private enterprises to assure maintenance of proper standards. Mastoni |
