Silver, not gold, glitters in Balinese village
By Mehru Jaffer
CELUK, Bali (JP): Several decades ago, Wayan Rasning, 44, worked with gold. Now she works mostly with silver in Celuk, a Balinese village that has evolved into a prolific producer of jewelry over the years.
But that is all right, as it is silver that brings better business to Wayan. Traditionally, Balinese prefer to buy gold for themselves, and when she was 10, Wayan remembers helping her parents make exquisite pieces of gold jewelry.
It was filigreed and fine. But it did not bring the family much money. Even a decade ago, Wayan made just a piece or two on her own. Then she would stand on sidewalks in the hope that some tourist would pay her at least for the basic cost.
Life was difficult for her and her immediate family of four, she recalled from her home in Celuk. She sighed in relief at the thought that she no longer has to suffer the indignity of having to peddle beautiful bracelets, brooches, rings, earrings and other wide-ranging products like souvenirs and heirlooms.
All she does these days is concentrate on her art, while the finished product is taken to shops by her buyers. And that has changed her life forever, like that of most silversmiths in Celuk, a village where the per capita income is the second highest in Bali.
Two things are responsible for having transformed the lives of hundreds of villagers in recent years. First of all, most goldsmiths switched to working with silver, which is the less costly of the two metals.
Second, the signs of the time were heeded and anyone who was interested in learning the craft was welcomed into the profession that has traditionally been a hereditary art.
In ancient times, the making of jewelry was the exclusive duty and job of the high caste Pande clan. It was the responsibility of this caste not only to drape members of the ruling elite with ornate gold jewelry but also to cast for them the mystical dagger kris that empowered the owner with other worldly strengths.
As a young girl, Wayan remembers perhaps four families in Celuk involved in gold and silver work. Today, she said, there are about cottages behind almost each home where at least five workers are employed daily to fulfill orders for large shops and exporters.
Sometimes the number of workers hammering away on extremely intricate and detailed silver and gold designs in one cottage can run into a much larger group, the youngest not yet a teenager.
However, allowing children to learn the delicate art of silver work is not considered exploiting them. Most children go to school, after which they wander in and out of the workshops where, at first, they mostly play with the simple, handheld tools and learn the intricacies of the art later, if they want to.
Show room
Wayan said that it was a chance meeting in 1990 with Desak Suarti, a leading silver trader and designer that got her business rolling. Suarti had just returned from the United States after having opened a showroom in New York's trendy art village, Soho.
She was selling ethnic Balinese silver jewelry to 850 shops around the world and was looking for more workers to supply her seemingly endless demand for silver.
Soon, Wayan had so much work on her hands that she could not cope with it all by herself. At first she roped in other members of the family. Then she took on trainees and started to teach the family craft to whoever else wanted to learn it from her.
Suarti said that Wayan remains one of her favorite workers as she is very innovative and has added many a new idea to the silverware and jewelry created by Suarti. Suarti is also in favor of the home industry, where women remain with the family even as they earn a living.
She does not like the thought of women being forced to trudge to factories to spend the best years of their lives away from the family.
A well-known Balinese dancer, Suarti likes the thought of children returning from school to find their mother at home and involved in the creation of beautiful handicrafts. Children sit with their elders and imitate them and the skills learned at that young age remain with them for the rest of their lives, said Suarti, who learned to dance from her grandmother at the age of seven.
As a child, her favorite toys were different instruments that make up the gamelan orchestra and it was from watching her father paint that she learned the art herself.
She hopes that machines will never replace the handmade jewelry that has become synonymous with beautiful Bali. "The demand for handmade silver jewelry remains much higher than the supply."
"So we must continue to produce it," added Suarti's husband, Peter Luce, an American trader who has been exporting silver work from Bali since the 1970s.
To improve working conditions in Celuk, Suarti formed a cooperative with 11 other silver traders last year that has strengthened the purchasing power for its members and freed many of them from the clutches of middlemen. As a group, members enjoy better credibility with banks and other lending institutions too.
When Suarti met Wayan, the latter was living in one room. Today, Wayan supervises a cottage behind her home that is the workplace for 35 craftsmen from all castes, ages and sex. For training a novice for three months she pays nothing. Only later is the apprentice started on a basic salary of Rp 300,000 per month.
Depending on how good and how quick a worker is, the monthly income soon jumps to Rp 600,000. The regular ones, who have been working with her for a while, earn as much as Rp 2 million per month.
Apart from providing work, Wayan has also built little rooms which her employees from other parts of the island rent from her during their stay in Celuk.
Twenty-one year old Suryanata came all the way to work and live at Wayan's from Penida islands, southeast of Bali with a limestone landscape where little grows and where the rulers of the Balinese kingdom of Klungkung in ancient times had exiled convicts.
Shy Suryanata wanted to learn the art of the famed Celuk silversmiths instead of farming like his father. After the ninth grade, when his peasant parents could no longer afford to either feed him or send him to school, Suryanata looked for work.
Although he does not earn much yet, he is very happy to hold so much silver close to his skin, he said.
And thanks to craftsmen like Suryanata, silver handicraft exports from Bali has reached a high of nearly US$30 million in recent times, making a miraculous change to the lives of the once poverty-stricken villagers.