Silver, not gold, glitters in Balinese village

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.