Title Ur Blog Bro..!!!

The island of Lombok in Indonesia is well known for its handicrafts and traditional craft work, in particular pottery, basket-making, and weaving. The three villages of Banyumulek, Masbagik Timur, and Penujak represent the island's major pottery-producing areas. Here, where pottery making is their main source of income, the village women have been producing pottery since the decline of the East Javanese Hindu Kingdom of Majapahit in the early part of the 16th century.

Even today, the women potters of these three villages pass down their unique skills from mother to daughter in a tradition called "turun temurun." The high level of skill of the Sasak potters is remarkable. With very simple tools, and materials gathered from the local countryside, the women potters of all three villages work in their homes to create earthenware pots of great beauty and utility, with skills passed down from generation to generation. They begin learning the process from a very early age.

Since 1988 the Lombok Crafts Project has been assisting the women potters of Lombok to improve their standard of living through technical and marketing assistance. This bilateral development project between the Governments of the Republic of Indonesia and New Zealand is supported by the Indonesian Department of Industry. In each of the three villages, the Project has funded the building of work shelters and showrooms. Technical, quality and design skills have been improved through input by New Zealand advisers, together with administrative, marketing, financial and logistic training.

The objective of the Lombok Crafts Project is to develop a potter-controlled cooperative commercial venture that will create adequate income opportunities for potters in the three villages, and also provide funding to improve social conditions in the villages for both project and non-project potters. Through this bilateral assistance program, quality, durability and marketability of the product has improved significantly. The project has helped to substantially increase the income of the potter, and all surplus profits from sales are used by the potters to improve living and working conditions in the villages.

The project has assisted the potters to process their clays in ways which produce a stronger product. The finished pots are coated with a slip made from the same clay, sieved to produce a fine surface which is later burnished with a stone. The earthenware clay that the women use is dug locally and has different qualities in each village. The potters never have to travel more than three kilometers from their houses to find sufficient clay for their needs. Greyish brown, the indigenous clay becomes a beautiful rich red brown color when fired.

The potters work the clay by hand, sometimes using a round stone and wooden paddle. This is one of the oldest ways of making pottery, and Lombok is one of the few places in the world where it has survived. The large water storage jars are formed by the potter building up and scraping the walls of the pot as she walks around it. Firing takes place as soon as the pots are dry. After half a day in the sun to finish drying, the pots are stacked in a pile with a variety of fuel including firewood and coconut husks. Once the fire is going well, the stack is covered with rice straw and rice husks which burn out to leave a thick ash cover, holding in the heat for the final stages of firing.

The project has taught potters to use more fuel and a longer firing time so that pots are well fired and strong. The clay used to produce Sasak pottery pots has been approved for food safety by the appropriate testing authorities in New Zealand and the United Kingdom, and is considered food safe by the US FDA. Certificate numbers available upon request. Earthenware products from the Lombok Pottery Center include food storage items as well as cooking vessels. While handmade earthenware is intrinsically fragile, if handled with care it will last for many years.