Indonesia Export - Site Navigation

We’ve made a few small changes to our structure over the past 2 days — hopefully, they’ll make your life easier.

The Indonesia Export Site Map

You can access this from our Information tab in the top navigation menu. We hope it will give you a clean and easy way to navigate through the website.

Product Index with Thumbnails

In addition to our Alphabetical Product Index, we’ve now added an Alphabetical Index with Thumbnails (first image from every category). You’ll have to navigate through page by page (using the menu at the bottom) but rather than our sometimes obscure product line titles, you’ll have a handy small image to help you identify what you’re looking for.

Product Index by Type

We’ve also broken down the different product lines into categories that may help you find similar or related product lines while you’re putting together an order. No hard or fast rules, just fairly general headings:

1. Furniture
2. Classic Bali Carvings — Decorative Artwork & Craft
3. Modern Craft — Decorative Giftware & Home Decor from Bali, Lombok & Java
4. Candles, Incense & Oils
5. Homeware, Tableware & Functional Home Decor
6. Stone, Glass, Ceramic & Terracotta
7. Stock Lists

(These links, by the way, are clickable — you can use them to go straight to the relevant section on the Product Index.)

Finally, I had removed the Logon link from the top navigation bar — sorry about that, it’s back now.

Afternoon,

Sean

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Durian Wood

We don’t have many Durian Wood products — we do find the wood used a little however in some of our Storyboards, The Bali Rococo Line and the pole for Balinese Umbrellas.

Strictly speaking, Durian is a plant (bears fruit) rather than a tree. The fruit is very popular here in Bali and when it’s in season, it’s sometimes hard to escape the sickly sweet smell. And, when I say it’s sickly sweet, I’m not kidding — that’s how it smells.

The Durian over here is probably Durian zibethinus but as there are a few species across the archipelago, feel free to correct me if you have a better candidate for the type used in handicrafts.

If you’re interested in learning more, please visit the Durian Palace:

http://www.durianpalace.com/

Excellent site, written by a real fan of the Durian.

Botanically speaking, durian is a member of the plant family Bombacaceae, which also includes the baobab (Adansonia digitata) of tropical Africa, malabar chestnut (Pachira aquatica), bombax (Bombax ellipticum), silk floss tree (Chorisia speciosa), and the balsa or corkwood tree (Ochroma pyramidale). Duri is a Malaysian word meaning “spike.” In the genus Durio are at least 27 or 28 species, 19 of which are native to the island of Borneo (thought to be Durio’s original center of diversity), 11 to peninsular Malaysia, and 7 to Sumatra. Of 27 species, at least seven are notable for producing edible fruit, one of which (Durio zibethinus) is cultivated commercially in huge quantities in southeast Asia. Zibethinus is derived from the Italian word zibetto, which means “civet cat,” an old name for “skunk”—very unflattering for the durian, and some durian antagonists would say, for the civet cat!

The durian is a very ancient and primitive fruit. Some botanists regard the wild ancestors of modern durians as one of the first plants to rely on animals for dispersal of its seeds, enticing them to do so with attractive, nutritious, delicious, and odiferous food surrounding the seeds within a large fruit capsule. A British botanist named E.J.H. Corner originated this “durian theory of plant evolution.” In scientific papers published starting in 1949, he argued that the enticement of animals to transport seeds in their bellies arose before all other methods of plant seed dispersal, and that primitive ancestors of D. zibethinus were the not only the earliest practitioners of that strategy but the earliest plants to evolve into woody trees. (Read David Quammen’s entertaining and informative article about E.J.H. Corner’s durian theory of plant evolution here.)

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Magnolia or Kepelan Wood

Magnolia wood (Manglietia glauca) — known locally as kepelan — is moderately heavy, fairly hard and straight grained.

It resembles yellow poplar.

Magnolia is moderately stiff, high in shock resistance, and low in shrinkage.

It can be used for lumber, veneer, furniture (upholstery frames), boxes, interior trim, cabinetry, doors, knife handles, caskets, and plywood.

Not so widely used among our handicrafts, I’ve only come across magnolia wood in our Storyboards.

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Best Sellers from Indonesia Export

After a few requests from different customers (old & new), we’ve taken some time to reorganise our Best Sellers category.

I hope you enjoy the new presentation — we’ve picked out our most popular categories and, even more importantly, when you click into that category, you’ll be shown only the best selling models in that particular line.

Some things to bear in mind:

Best Sellers are real products that we’ve shipped to real customers over the past twelve months from our catalogue pages. That means you won’t get a chance to see some of the custom work we’ve done and you won’t get a chance to judge the “unique products” — like the 5, 6 and 8 foot high suar statues and so on.

Another point: just because a product is a Best Seller, that doesn’t mean it’s best for you… it may sound obvious when I put it like that but, for sure, you’ll always be the best judge of your individual markets and customers.

That said, if you want our advice or feel that you could benefit from a brainstorming session, drop us a line — we’re happy to help in any way.

All of that said, I hope the new presentation gives you something to think about or at least helps clear a path into the catalogue.

Please go to:

http://www.indonesiaexport.com/hottest.php

Enjoy,

Sean

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The Indonesia Export DVD Catalogue

If you were to take our price sheets in Excel format — no pictures, just codes, sizes, prices and so on — and set up the document to print, you would be looking at over 900 pages of densely packed type.

If you were to add even small images (thumbnails) to that document, you might be looking at 5,000 pages in all.

In the past 3 months, we’ve added nearly 3,000 products online (including substantial updates to popular categories).

To cut a long story short, we’re simply not kidding when we say that we have just too many products and too many updates to keep a print version of our catalogue up to date.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve spent a little time trying to come up with useful solutions and now, I’m happy to say, we’re able to offer you a full DVD version of our website.

Like the original, the DVD catalogue version of Indonesia Export has all the pricing and information. You can search through it exactly as if you were online.

We’ve even gone so far as to include a few extras:

1. Additional product images from around Bali.
2. The Excel spreadsheet version of all our pricing (in case you’re in the mood to print 900 pages).
3. Traditional Balinese Music — hours of Balinese music in MP3 format.
4. A freeware image viewer (Farstone) that is a lot more convenient and powerful than the image viewers built in with Windows.

Requirements

1. PC Compatible Computer running Microsoft Windows (we’ve tested on XP only but should run with Windows 98, 2000, XP & Vista).
2. A DVD drive on your laptop or computer (we would have liked to offer a CD but there’s simply too much information — nearly 3 Gigabytes in total).

That’s it.

Pricing

The DVD Catalogue is free for all our existing customers. You need only send us an email to confirm that you want the DVD and please confirm your mailing address. We’ll send the DVD out by standard post — it will take a week or so to reach you.

If you have not ordered from Indonesia Export but would like a copy of the DVD, there will be a charge of US$30.00 to cover expenses. If, after you receive the DVD, you decide to order from us, we’ll deduct that US$30.00 fee from your order.

Simple as that.

Please send an email to indonesiaexport@indonesiaexport.com for your copy.

Enjoy,

Sean

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Bali Metal Candle Lanterns, Salty Air and Rust

We’ve been asked what our Metal Lanterns are made from and how well they might stand up to outside weather conditons (particularly when close to the ocean.

Here’s a short summary of what we know:

The Metal Lanterns are made from Iron (Fe) mixed with Zink (Zn).

The metals are mixed together at high temperature and then molded as a plate — the plate can be anywhere from 0.3 mm to 1.2 mm thick. (Our metal lanterns are usually between 0.35 & 0.4 mm thick.)

There should be little or no problem using the lanterns outdoors even in a salty climate because…

Each lantern is cleaned inside and out with Phosphoric Acid (H3PO4), base coat is then applied followed by the top coat (usually an antique finish).

Long story short: as long as the paint / coat is still there (meaning it doesn’t get scratched off to reveal the iron underneath), these products shouldn’t give you any rust problems.

You can see the stuff I’m talking about by going to:

Indonesia Export - Metal Candle Lanterns

By the way, Bali has a very salt rich climate and, so far, we haven’t had any problem with these products.

Afternoon,

Sean

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Bali Beads - An Introduction (and a small rant)

Up until about five minutes ago, I thought I understood the meaning of “Bali Bead”…

… I was wrong (sigh).

I had thought, silly me… SOOOO naive… that a Bali bead was a bead made in Bali. Apparently not.

According to one article:

“Bali beads originated in India. The Indians taught the Balinese how to make the beads. The majority of Bali beads today are still made in India. Some people differentiate between Bali and Bali Style beads. Bali style beads are made the same way as Bali beads, but do not come from Bali - instead they come from India.”

It’s the overall tone of the article that bugs me – The Indians taught the Balinese how to make the beads… you’d figure “the Indians” might have called them Indian beads, wouldn’t ya?

More importantly, for me (and I admit, I’m a little funny about stuff like this) the article seems to miss the point somewhat:

It’s true, of course, that Indian culture and religion has played a very large role in the development of this little island culture.

The Hindu religion and culture arrived in Indonesia about 2,000 years ago – probably by Indian traders from Gujerati who were attracted to the islands by their riches in gold, spices, and sandalwood. And why not? That’s exactly the way Islam & Christianity also arrived here… trade.

Indian script has been found in Indonesia dating back to the 5th Century and shows that there were several Indian-style Kingdoms in West Java and Borneo.

Today, you can still see the remains of ancient monasteries and temples in Bali. In these places, the Balinese prices were consecrated into the Indic family tree as god-kings. Balinese script, which many Balinese kids still have to learn, is derived from the Palava script of South India.

Now, I’m no expert on Bali or Balinese history – I’m just reading from other (hopefully more learned sources) but it seems to me that a person saying, “the Indians” taught the Balinese to make beads is kind of like saying the Romans taught Americans how to make bridges and buildings. So, really, the Golden Gate Bridge and the Empire State are Italian but we call it American… maybe they’re Greek.

Let me put it this way: the Balinese have been working stone, wood and metal since the Early Metal and Bronze eras… BC, in other words. Between then and now, they’ve had just about every foreign influence you can point to or shake a stick at: Indian, Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, English, Japanese, Malay. In other words, just like America, England or Ireland, many foreign feet have left impressions in the sand.

In no way at all does that mean that a Bali bead is really an Indian bead (or vice versa).

For our Bali beads, which are all made in Bali (natch), wood, glass and .925 sterling silver are the most common materials.

Like any handicraft in Bali, the beads are really made by hand… really. There’s no industrial process, no huge factory spitting out beads by the million.

The handicraft industry as I know it has always been a cottage industry.

On one level, that means the beads differ very slightly – it could be a bad thing but I find the concept of a unique article to be charming.

We buy our beads at prices that are a combination of silver weight in grams (material) and workmanship – that means certain items are more expensive just because more work goes into them… I’ve been purchasing in Bali on that system with beads, statues and furnishings for such a long time that it makes total sense to me.

Technorati Tags: beads, bali beads, background on Bali Beads, Silver Bali Beads

Technorati Tags: beads, bali beads, background on Bali Beads, Silver Bali Beads

Technorati Tags: beads, bali beads, background on Bali Beads, Silver Bali Beads

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Types of wood used in making Bali carvings