I have been called a snob because of my obsession of sea salt and black pepper. Yeah I know it makes no sense at all and it's kind of a shallow. When we first got to Bali we found a Japanese and a Balinese guy in Ubud selling salt and soap in a make shift store. I starting asking them questions about their salt, though we barely spoke a common language. I found out Balinese salt comes from Kusamba. I got my itch and started collecting sea salt everywhere we went. Zarah joined in by requesting her salt at the dinner table and not mine. Last month we launched a line of body care products that are taking off for us, and I can’t stop thinking about how to add to the line. Oh yeah, Kusamba bath salt.
One of our agents here married a girl from Kusamba. He text me the Jalan (street) where we could find someone in her family and off we went. Kusamba is truly a beautiful beach, sparkling clean without a tourist in sight. Women sift through sand for rocks to sell in Denpasar for villa construction. Everything they use to mine the salt comes from either a palm tree or a piece of plastic.
Tables of palm trees lined in black hold salt water for dying.
Farmer pours sea water on sand repeatedly to make it super salty.
Sorting rocks to sell.
Farmer loads salty sand into palm trunk lined with woven plastic fabric. Then he pours sea water over it to filter out the sand.
Salt crystals forming.
Pocari Sweat is salty water that tastes nasty like a bad Gatorade.
So about design. When do we do it? Most of the time at home it gets lost with production, sales, logistics and all the mistakes that happen along the way. I never feel I get enough time to enjoy myself, lose myself in designing. Being in Bali is not just about engrossing ourselves in the beauty and creativity of the island but about being away from the daily office grind.
My friend Jessica Diamond recently asked me during a Skype conversation, “Is it hard to take all the inspiration you see there and translate it to make it relevant for the US and your line?” I have been thinking a lot about that, here are some images of what I see here daily and some links to places we go.
India sitting on ruffles in Asia, how relevant is this?
Ubud
Japanese designers have a big presence in Bali. This is a soap store call Kou in Ubud. Great presentation.
Temple in Echo Beach Canggu. These structural details influence so much design here.
I had such a great day, sitting at the wheel in a ceramics studio. Not throwing, because although Mary's cermaics class in high school was my only A grade, I flunked the throwing part. I was sitting there spinning the bowls (someone else threw) and designing the patterns on them. Not on a peice of paper but on the clay itself. I carved and scratched in the designs and breathed in the dust, it was very resfreshing. Why don't we do this more as designers? All my skills came back, within minutes I was barking orders, art directing and teaching a master's class to Ketut. Screw the computer and all the time I spend on it designing. I want more Ketuts in my life.
Zarah Rae (my 4 year old baby) also had the best day ever. She modeled for a freind here who has a kids clothing line and got to play all day long with two peanut butter colored dachshund puppies.
Mark spent the day at Imigrasi extending our visas.
Who has time for blogging, I mean I am trying to get some work done. (My big excuse for not being a steadfast real blogger). Cry me a river but work can be hard here. Other things come into play in Bali besides work. You are thinking like what; sun bathing, swimming in the ocean, shopping? Well yes, except the sun bathing part. But in Bali you spend a lot of time just surviving. Have you ever heard of kutu rambut? Well that is my first solid Bhasa Indonesian phrase, it means, “ I have lice lady, please help me” or “ lice hair”. Which is what we have been doing for the last three days. After shopping for lice help for 4 hours and stopping at 15 apoteks (pharmacies) and super markets how could I think of work. Then it was a matter of applying the treatments to the girls, myself and the next-door neighbor girl from Australia. I am loving the illegal strength chemical they sell her for 50 cents. Everybody in Bali has lice, something you only learn once you‘ve got it. A friend of mine here who is in High School told me, “ when have I not had lice?” Imagine sitting on his airplane chair after he changes seats.
OK but besides all that, my preoccupation with the rats at night because they are taking over our living room and basically feeling stoned all day from all the heat and humidity, we do work. Mark seems to think we work really hard. We have been finding new vendors with great strengths in ceramics, embroidery, and hard goods. I find myself playing manufacturer too. I have found a sweet tailor who also runs an Islamic religious school for little girls and boys next door to his house and sewing machine. He works on my stuff at night after his factory job, this way I can see my ideas come to life. Tailors are everywhere here and I buy fabrics from the wholesale market, both so accessible to everyone. I was in a button and accessory store the other day and I looked around, it was filled with designers from everywhere, Brazil, Australia and Indonesia to name a few. Bali is a huge designer experiment and it is very inspiring. Come on, you should try this.
Sara Ruffin, one my childhood friends has come to Bali for a “work trip”. Her first time to Asia. Yes I can tell you of how she is amazed and stunned by the beauty of Bali, the cacophony of animals’ sounds and the scent of burning trash and frangipani flowers. But the most interesting part of Sara’s “work trip” is her visit to the coffee farms. Why, because I learned from her of the very costly coffee that is shat out by a cat in a cage is sold for 100-600 USD a pound. You think I am making it, up? This is no laughing matter (mostly because Sara needs to sample some to justify her trip to the company.)
This is her interview:
Carter: Sara, why is your hair so very puffy on top?
Sara: Well it is a combination of over processing, genetics and the extreme humidity.
Carter: How do you compare your many years of living in Latin America working in coffee to your first visit to the Kintamani and Mt. Batur coffee farms?
Sara: The farms are smaller, independent owners, like a cottage industry. I saw more coffee trees next to fruit trees and pepper trees. That’s the first time I have seen citrus with coffee. I can not really articulate anything right now.
Carter: You are single, what do you think of the men so far in Bali?
Sara: Indonesian men or the honkies?
Carter: all
Sara: The hairy aging surfer with the sagging over tanned skin is certainly not my cup of tea. However the guy with the rickshaw is really giving me a little jolt.
Carter: How has your addiction to Facebook served you while traveling here?
Sara: I can tell everyone I have lost my luggage.
Carter: I saw your images of the caged cats, how does that actually go down with them being the conduit to the coffee poo?
Sara: One upon a time the farmers were pissed off that they were chomping down on the best and ripest coffee cherries. They wanted to retrieve the prime coffee beans, so they dug through their poo from these animals. And hence, coffee is served
Carter: It just makes me sick, since you were too cheap to buy a cup, what did it smell like?
Sara: It made my mouth water. No I did not sniff it.
Carter: In the true spirit of your newly acquired single status (see Facebook) and going to Ubud like Eat, Pray, Love can you see yourself here? Bali is full of foreigner transplants starting businesses, what would you do here in another life?
Sara: Oh my god. I would be a Monkey Temple Guide. I would not have a journal and never talk about my inner discovery. I refuse to read that book.
As we have in the past, my family and I decided we would spend a few months during the summer in Bali. Well, I really decided we should get out of Dodge and who could complain. We have been coming to Bali for over 12 years and a couple years ago I landed here with my kids with the vague idea we could manufacture here. Where was my husband, well that is another story, which I will let him tell.
A brief explanation on who and what we do. My husband Mark and I, Carter, along with a great small team at home in the San Francisco Bay Area, design and manufacture home products. Our company is India Rose. We have been in business since 2003 and started importing in 2007 our designs made in India, Mexico and Indonesia for the American market. It’s been a ride, amazing the whole way. And yes, you should do it too. Well that it why we thought of doing a blog for the summer from Indonesia, so people in design could see anything is possible when you are ready to move away from your corporate cubicle. What a joy it is to start making your own decisions, have the ability to create and make change.
By the way, I truly suck at writing but I am not letting that stop me. And, I hate blogs. Yeah I said it, they make me a little uneasy. But I am trying out an open mind and understand blogs are a fantastic tool to connect to people.
Eat, Pray, Love – not so much for me, but this is how we put eats on the table. That book takes place where we travel for work, but this blog is not about my journey and me but about our journey for you. Maybe, or maybe not. Others in our design world and people in our life will be visiting us this summer, hopefully I can get them to write too.
I am posting images from our first couple weeks here. We shop a lot (research), visit factories and at some point design. At the end of August the goal is to have an almost finished line for Spring 2011. Fingers crossed.
