English explanation-
Oooom Piet- where-when-why-how-what

Oooom Piet- a charity or what?
what about the foundation behind it?

Oooom Piet at this point is mostly this site, with stories, opinions, pictures, and its over-abundant stock, stored at the Jaffe-Klusman home in Leiden. Lexa Jaffe-Klusman, the founding mother, used to fill two containers a year and then get lots of people to help her sell Oooom Piet's special imports from Indonesia in Holland. It concerned mostly handcrafted products, and Oooom Piet became a very active branch of the "16 september stichting". It grew so much that Lexa ahd to admit it had become too big for its and her own good. End of 2009 the Leiden shop, Oooom Piet's Tempat, closed. Spring 2010 Oooom Piet for the last time had a stand with multiple booths and a lot of kites hanging over them at the big Eurasian event in The Hague, the Tong Tong Fair. An annual get-together, kumpulan, of large numbers of people with their roots in the colonial Dutch East Indies, or with an interest in Indonesia.
Right now ni9neLives, the 16 september stichting's latest incarnation, is taking over many of Oooom Piet's activities, including some sales and school activities. We are working hard on making it possible to buy our special-design silver jewelry, our wayang, batik, kebaya's, silk cocoons, handmade paper and other artist's materials and so much more. We are also involved in workshops for highschool students
But there is so much stock left from when Oooom Piet had its own shop and participated in big fairs- and imported two chock-full containers a year- that our house is more like a warehouse than a showroom. Once we are ready with our clean-up, we'll also try and arrange jewelry making workshops at our home with sterling silver and semi-precious beads ni9neLives is also involved in workshops for a special type of Fashion Show, and it is working on a children's program on Nusa Penida, called Pay4Play. Click here to surf to this bilingual site and find out more.
The 16 September Foundation is a small family foundation which was started in 1994 with its "16 september pers" in order to publish "Bevrijdingsdag", by Wil Mannesse. This is a short novel-of-ideas about the days Heerlen, a small city in the Southern part of the Netherlands, was liberated and the idea of freedom in many guises. In September 1944, long months before the rest of the country shook off German occupation, the Allied Forces took over that region- nearly a year before the Japanese were defeated in South East Asia.

what about the family behind the foundation?
the influence of the Second World War in South East Asia

The 16 September Foundation in its statutes says it tries to approach misery, illness and death in playful and creative ways. 16 September is a family birthdate- and the family name Alexander-Alexa lives on through Lexa Jaffe-Klusman, his grandchild from Bandung, now in Leiden, and two of the original Alexander Nicolaas Klusman's great-grandchildren in Amsterdam, but born in Zambia, and in Salem, USA. Moving from one continent to another, because of either jobs or a spouse, seems part of the family adat- customary behavior. The family moved to Holland after the second World War.
Mieneke Klusman-James had four young children when husband Jean Klusman was taken prisoner and spent four years as a POW in Japan. The practice area in the house was empty now that doctor Klusman was gone, and Mieneke used the available rooms to house other women who were of Eurasian descent and not forced into camps by the Japanese. They also had young children and it helped to keep the military from confiscating the house that the house was old. The communal housing of course was also an expression of solidarity- the families had each other even with the men gone. Mieneke made dresses for her little daughters from tablecloths and traded goods goods for food with the local population. Cotton sheets, highly valued as they could be made into batik sarung, for fresh vegetables, needed for their vitamins and minerals.
When Oooom Piet was created, the initiator of the foundation, Lexa Jaffe-Klusman, had Mieneke Klusman very much in mind. She knew her mother, who had in a way travelled along with Lexa on her 1996 trip to their native country. When hearing the stories about how Lexa and her daughter Jenny had stayed with a Balinese family she claimed to be jealous of this new way of interacting with local Indonesians. Mieneke had not enjoyed the barrier between her, a woman with mixed colonial-native ancestry, and the so-called inlanders, the natives.
Mieneke had changed a lot since the times she still referred to Indonesia as 'the Indies', as a loyal member of her colonial family. She had told Lexa stories of racism and discrimination during colonial times, but Lexa was still shocked to hear Indonesians refer to the colonial period as the 'Dutch occupation'. But then again, her own family called Sukarno a 'collaborator with the Japanese', an equally correct but unpleasant way of describing someone known by Indonesians as the freedom fighter he also was. All members of the Klusman-James family survived WW II, Indonesia gained reognition as an independent nation. But the struggle for independence right after was gruesome and left many scars.

a post-colonial Indisch meisje, a girl from the Indies, in Indonesia

The Klusman-James family left for the Netherlands in early 1946 and learned to live without servants, in a cold climate. 50 years later, when Lexa finally went back to Bandung, she went as the wife of an American Jewish astronomer, and their youngest daughter came along. Walter's offer to do some teaching during their vacation was graciously accepted by the director of the Observatory of Lembang, close byBandung. Lexa and her high school-age daughter were treated as family guests by the Director and his two sons. Their hospitality was not hampered at all by the fact that this same astronomy professor's father had fought for independence from the Dutch during the ugly years of 1939-1949. The Indonesian professor actually owns an impressive collection of books and documents having to do with Dutch-Indonesian relations during this period and has studied what was written about it by both sides.
Lexa has found most Indonesians are very open to friendship with a woman with a colonial background. She tries to avoid the traps of neo-colonialism and from the start has been eager to learn to communicate in their language. Indonesians also seem to enjoy her eagerness to experience their way of life and their regular home-cooked meals. They have often let her stay at their homes- at times having to overcome embarassment, at times greatly amused by a Westerner's different ways of doing things.
They found it hard to believe Oooom Piet is really not after financial profits, but always appreciated Lexa as a purchaser to share money and responsibility when purchasing goods for Oooom Piet which would not necessarily sell easily. As she got to know people more intimately she found many shared her dislike of the condescension often connected to charity. Having money in relative abundance remains a problem. Ah well- we have to accept limitations- even if that is hard!
Oooom Piet tries to help as one helps family members or good friends, not giving handouts to people one pities. We try to show respect for our suppliers by letting them know we appreciate what they sell, which is often what they themselves or their friends have made by hand. We can bargain with the best of them- mostly simply by making it cear we can sell much more if the price is lower, sometimes by making it clear we are insulted if they think we do not know the local price. Our knowing Bahsa Indonesia helps, our being able to spout a few words of Balinese impresses. Only some people realise we sometimes by deliberately overpay when we find someone badly needs money and has few marketable skills.
By doing business with people and letting them supply goods, they can feel absolutely free to use the money they get whichever way they see fit. If someone is ill or needs school fees it is likely that it will be used to pay for medical care or education. But we have often only understood their priorities after the fact. Different social and religious structures make it difficult to understand people's needs. Who would have thought that the large sum needed for a tooth filing ceremony or for having a ngaben, a ritual cremation, now rather than wait for the cheaper group cremation, is felt to be the most urgent need? We ourselves, after more than a decade of intimate contact with people on Hindu Bali, were surprised, but very happy that the loving daughter had felt free to spend her hard-earned money this way, so her mother need not stay under ground and have to dwell with the netherworld's demons any longer.
We don't like the term 'Dutch occupation', but the colonial period was certainly a period of racism and unfairness, with power and money firmly clung to, if need be through military violence, by a small Dutch minority and their government in far-away Holland. Discrimination was made into a fine art. In my family we call that 'counting the droplets'. Not only the color of one's skin, also the thickness of one's accent in Dutch, the exact level of one's education and occupation were counted. People who were more obviously of mixed blood got half the wages of so-called totoks, purebred Dutch. Race is a social construct- but a construct that has many tangible consequences, to this very day.

Oooom Piet- a non-profit family business

"Oom" is Dutch for uncle, and Lexa inherited the starting capital for the Oooom Piet import business from her real oom Piet, her mother's brother. It started in 1997 with a small stand at the Tong Tong Fair in The Hague, then still called the Pasar Malam Besar. That fair is a kind of kumpulan, a big annual get-together of people with roots in the Indies-Indonesia, and of those somehow interested in that country.
Oooom Piet fitted right in with the other stands at the Tong Tong's Indonesia Pavillion. But it also stood out- people stopped to count the number of O's in our name and the colorful Balinese kites drew many customers- as did, even that very first year, our specially designed earrings with small fan coral picked up on the beach. And the bebek rice spoon- a replica of the duck spoon Lexa's mother, Mieneke, got from her and oom Piet's brother Frits who brought it from Bali in 1949. Lexa also has a little wood-carved deer he bought there for her, and she remembers his green Indonesian coffee beans being roasted in a frying pan- a real treat in post-war Holland.
Objects carry histories, and people often have told us Oooom Piet sells stories almost as much as it sells objects. We have learned to call this 'material culture'. In 2008 Rosanne, a major in visual cultural anthropology at Leiden University, made an in-depth portrait of Oooom Piet and his niece as an example of material culture. If you want to hold on to your roots it is nice to have objects that connect you with your country of origin. Her documentary shows how many customers come and water their roots by buying a creepy-crawly toy for their children or grand-children, or honor their ancestors by having traditional Indonesian clothes sewn for their wedding, putting some traditional Indonesian objects on a coffin.
We had Indonesian helpers and Dutch friends and quite a few relatives who, as it should be in an Indies family, of course supported Lexa's family business, even if it meant coming from the U.S. and working hard at the Pasar, market or fair, instead of having a relaxing vacation. Our second year Vinni, 'just a friend we met in Bali' came from Denmark especially for the Pasar, and in 2001 she even brought her parents along- wonderful helpers all of them. In 2009 we even had a daughter's friend's husband from Cameroon getting his first impression of Holland as a worker for Oooom Piet at the Tong Tong Fair. Quite a few members of the Oooom Piet family keep in touch- live or on facebook- even though Oooom Piet no longer needs helpers since for the shop and the big fair.

Oooom Piet- cut back to size, but full of plans for the future

The Oooom of Oooom Piet is really the mantra aum which is frequently heard at temple ceremonies on Hindu Bali, where we have our Indonesian headquarters. It stands for destruction- rebirth- and protection of new life.
Oooom Piet is based in Leiden, and In 2001 we opened our own little shop there, meant to be a haven for people uprooted in the late '40-s or in the '50-s or even '60-s, after the colonial era had ended. When we closed the Mom and Dad style corner store at the end of 2009, almost eactly 8 years later, we were touched by how many customers tried to help us by buying as much as possible during the three months of our fall clearance. Many kind words were spoken. Stories were shared of little children on their very first independent shopping trip to the 'little shop on the corner'. A tiny boy and his mother walked home to get the rolls of small coins he had saved, wrapped in newspaper, to buy something himself at the special piggy-bank discount.. Some children drove their mother or father to despair because they could not get the child to say what he or she wanted. First every single mysterious or just colorful or even scary item in the shop had to be seen and touched. Because at Oooom Piet's you were often told to please look with your hands. How else do you know how a creepy-crawly moves or a bamboo spinning top sings? Scent is important too- many people commented on how they felt transported to our communal native country, or to the time spent in Indonesia as tourists or ex-pats, by the scents of cloves and akar wangi- scented root- and more, that met them when they entered.
When she planned the closing Fall Sales in 2009 Lexa felt a deep desire to for once be able to show off Oooom Piet's imports in style. Space was created for the Bali boxes, batik and ikat and other beautiful materials,the battery-free handmade toys and masks, the specially designed silver jewelry, the children's clothes by splitting them up into categories. Two weeks for each category to be shown in its full glory. Lexa herself and wheel chair clients, as well as mothers with children in buggies, enjoyed the space, but most customers protested strongly and kept asking for items not on display. They had gotten quite comfortable with hardly being able to move without knocking something over. They were not just tolerating the seeming chaos- it apparently made them feel good to browse and pick up items and go on a kind of discovery trip in this overcrowded little world of its own.

Oooom Piet in Indonesia and Komang's pondok- a special homestay

So the shop is closed. And the Oooom Piet stand at the big Eurasian Tong Tong Fair was the last one. Only the djaits, the sewing stand where Cok reigned from behind her treadle machine, probably return in 2011.
But Lexa does want to go back to Indonesia, where she was born and where she has rooted again after a leave-of-absence of almost exactly 50 years fom the country where she was born. She likes the mountains and the animals, flowers and trees. She enjoys the children and the food, but mostly she is happy to know she has friends there, friends who are almost family.
So she is not done yet with Indonesia. People We have many plans for projects in Indonesia and will use the money from selling off our stock to get those projects started. in other countries also make beautiful and funny things. Lexa is very impressed with the handicrafts of Vietnam. She really enjoyed the friendliness and sense of humor of some very resilient people, who survive by making and selling beautiful embroidery and handicrafts.
And then there is Komangs Pondok Mimpi- a dream cottage indeed.
Not just Oooom Piet's purchaser Lexa, also a number of members of the extended Oooom Piet family have been made to feel very much at home in a tiny village in the middle of tourist trap Bali. Belahpane Kaja is a place most Balinese even don't know where to find, but Komang has used the money he made during his seven times here in Holland= to build a wonderful house looking out over terraced sawah's, ricefields. This is not just for himself and his wife and son, it was always meant to accommodate a few guests at a time. They are welcome to stay at Komang and Astiti's home, learn how to play the bamboo rindik, paint the beautiful flowers Komang loves to grow or just r-e-l-a-x and feel warmly welcome. You can also ask Komang to take you on trips- Komang has been a chauffeur and guide for many years. but when tourism dried up after the turbulent fall of the Suharto regime and later the Bali bombings and other perceived or real trouble he looked for other sources of income and even sold his car. A great loss to the family, as Komang could always be depended on to drive a sick family member to the hospital when needed. By building the house he not only invested his European wages wisely- he also shared the money with friends and family who helped him build it.
There is much for us to learn from a society where granny and grandpa from the mountains are brought home to spend their last years where they grew up and to be cared for by family, rather than being left to professionals.
In our Western world many old people spend long years not so cosily together in god's waiting-room- with relatives rarely there, pets not allowed. At Komang's old family compound, right next to where he built his new house, there are not just old people, one also shares the yard with babies and chickens- and many friends and relations always drop in. There is lots of tea and coffee and banter. Relatives are giving each other a pijit- a massage, when someone has a headache or sore joints. The women are using their quieter moments to make offerings and sweets for the many many temple ceremonies. Grandparents are responsible for keeping the little children from being unhappy. Older children are lugging around their baby siblings and neighbors
It is a good place to be and we think of it as our home in Bali.
If you'd like us to connect you up with Komang in Bali, just send a mail with your info.

religion as reality- notes from an agnostic

Often the local priest's temple bell summons people to the sanggah, the Hindu house temple, for a special home ceremony. It is a reminder to put on sarung and kebaya, the pakaian adat or traditional clothes that express respect for the religious aspect of what is often mostly a social affair. At the end Lexa also gets an extra sprinkle of holy water, tirta, and some extra biji, grains of rice- because the regular priest knows she has trouble making the rice stick to her forehead.
In Kota Gede in Middle Java much about the social set-up is the same in the kampung, the living quarters we stay in. But there Lexa- oh well- let's just say "I" and start over:
I live with Muslims there and have learned to enjoy a number of Ramadan customs. When Wafiq invited me to break the fast at the neighborhood mesjid I borrowed a scarf from his wife Ifa. The mosque is temporarily housed in a school building, as the old mosque is still in the process of being renovated after the 2006 earthquake that did so much harm in the Jogjakarta area. The women had cooked enough for everyone and I was warmly welcomed by young and old. Many salamaleikums came my way. And yes, please take more pictures- what about me and my baby son?
I have clearly pleased people, even highly educated and not-so-strict muslims, by making the gesture of fasting along with them for a few days. At earlier Ramadan fasts, even in East Lombok, home to many extremists, I was never pushed into participating. I was just treated to tea or coffee and a snack because "We have them ready for after breaking the fast tounight, but you don't need to fast now!" I was invited over a number of times, even though I had had regular food all day, for the festive breaking of their fast with special drinks and fruit, and dishes prepared with special care. I was curious about the experience of fasting and it turned out to be rather easy- as long as you manage to get up at 4 a.m. to drink and eat enough then to last you for a while.
I witnessed a deeper dislike of terrorism amongst my Balinese and Javanese friends and acquaintances than one might perhaps expect in a predominantly muslim country. Muslim panatik is not what most Indonesians think highly off. Tolerance and forgiveness come much more naturally to them, even if they feel deeply hurt by cartoons not showing due respect for their prophet Muhammed. They are embarassed by their fanatically violent countrymen and feel they give non-believers the wrong idea about their faith.
Our deeply religious and always somewhat rebellious younger friend Herry Lahamid, who lives in Holland with her Dutch husband and their little son, only started wearing a head scarf recently. She claims this is because of what the Koran tells her, but we suspect she also wants to show people that there are Muslims and Muslims. Only recently have Herry and I felt we had to make a statement about something we used to take for granted. We used to feel religious beliefs were a private matter. It is a bit like my late friend Mr. Loose, an art historian who wrote his thesis on the wood carvings on choir benches in German Roman Catholic churches. But after Hitler had made being Jewish like a curse and he had to flee to The Hague, he went to the nearest synagogue and registered as a Jew.
So much for that.

some of our plans and project

We also have some more practical and direct worries. We worry about the money needed to send smart and hard-working kids to high school or perhaps beyond. An extremely intelligent Indonesian girl I know was very lucky and got scholarships and is now at university- to be a doctor, according to her proud and loving uncle. She herself told me: "No Lexa- I'm just going to be a midwife." Oh well- she will no doubt be a very good one. But what about less practical but equally intelligent kids? It is really good to hear about the much higher wages teachers are paid in Indonesia these days. I used to do some teaching there myself and was shocked at the low standards, but in September 2009 I visited a grade school on Nusa Penida where I felt things have gotten much better.
But stiil- spring of 2009 on Flores one smart little boy had to stay home from school until the stores opened. His new shoes, just bought with the money his father had gotten for driving us around were too small. His old ones had been tossed. And you are not allowed to enter school on flip-flops- they have to be those expensive shoes.
Another problem can be the distance to the nearest school. If Mommy has no moped and Daddy is gone very early every morning in his truck, it is hard for an eager 5-year old to go to kindergarten. Too far to walk, too expensive and too tricky to go by bus at that age. So we are dreaming of little pre-school programs which will combine generating some money and helping kids with low-income parents acquire pre-school-learning.Tteaching letter recognition and some basic Indonesian through songs and some number and general skills. For older children we are thinking of English songs- letting the caretakers use cd's and picture books so that spelling is connected with that illogical pronunciation that is so hard to master for Indonesians.
We like giving our products and projects names. So our recycling project we are calling "9 Lives", and our Child Labor project we have already named Pay for Play- a name which is a challenge for Balinese- grown-ups as well as children. F- and p-sounds are one sound to Indonesian ears as it makes no difference to the meaning of Indonesian words whether you use one or the other.
We know that for teenagers finding paying work is often the only option, and we have seen how that work can be a rather fun thing to do for young boys when they have no way of going to school in any case. Uniforms and books are too expensive- feeding them is already a problem for parents, and they usually go to a work place as a group, all from the same poor village.
But these days there is often just no work to be found.
We find sit-down toilets and an enclosed wash area quite practical. But we remember clearly- and feel somewhat nostalgic about- the kind of camping-out feeling we used to have in the late 1990-s, when we first stayed with local people in our native Indonesia. At that time a hole in the ground and a public mountain stream and thatch roofs and no tiles still were the norm on Bali- leave alone poorer islands. For us the esthetic pleasure compensated for body comforts, but now that our bones are stiffer we are more accepting of all these new-fangled 'improvements' that we used to abhor as taking the authenticity away and ruining the ecology. Wood-burning fires are once again used a lot- the economic crisis and the rise of fuel prices made the choice easy. But actually modern solar panels would probably be environmentally better.
So during the first trip there in a long time during which we needn't feel pressured by having to fill and ship a container- with goods not really needed since both our shop and our house were cluttered with all Oooom Piets abundant stock- during this brief but very full trip we felt very liberated. We could go back to spending time with children and thinking up ways of recycling packaging and stimulating self-help. We bought wares from an old lady who had never learned to write but knew very well how to add without the use of a calculator. She runs a corner store meant for her own neighbors, rather than the places we had gone to recently. All so as to be economic and efficient we had been buying large quantities from big shops with cell phones and computers and other practical tools- but without the pleasant scent of the good -?- old days.

Tong Tong Fair- the former Pasar Malam Besar-
even without Oooom Piet: worth a detour -or even a special trip!
25 May-5 June 2011, Malieveld, very close to Station Centraal, The Hague

The former Pasar Malam Besar, now called Tong Tong Fair, is where Oooom Piet started in 1997 and came to full bloom. Oooom Piet has not just closed its little shop- 2010 was its last year at the Tong Tong Fair. We shall miss all the excitement and all the customers who got to be friends. But one has to make choices. However- our djaits, seamstresses, will probably still be at their treadle machines to make you a traditional kebaya blouse or your own design garment from our wide selection of Indonesian traditional and modern materials.
This Eurasian fair is not just multi-cultural but also multi-faceted. The Grand Pasar offers shopping as a kind of world travel experience- with great bargains! Many people just come to shop or to enjoy the wide variety of sweet or spicy Indonesian snacks and food. At the Cooking Theatre you can learn how to cook Indonesian dishes yourself. Others come for the music and dancing, or the lectures, theater and workshops: the Tong Tong Festival. If you like to try and play gamelan music, or make batik or play traditional Indies children's games or make and fly kites- the Bengkel offers a wide variety of workshops.
But perhaps best of all- you get a chance to be part of a huge Eurasian kumpulan, a grand annual reunion of people with roots in the Indies or an interest in Indonesia.
Click here to go to the very good site of the Tong Tong Fair itself. You will be able to see what this great Eurasian festival is like. Many visitors are amateur videographers, and show what you come across when just jalan-jalan, walking around. Professionals have made some excellent video films especially of the best music and dance shows at the Tong Tong Festival- there are a number of theaters at the fair.You can surf the web for hours listening to slack guitar or the Indies singing called keroncong. Or if you like dance you will get to experience quite exciting performances. I myself found Sekala- Niskala very inspiring. It is an experimental choreography expressing themes from faith and religion by blending top quality traditional Balinese dance and gamelan with modern Western ballet. You can also get an English version of the site..

what we sell and where- the net, home and fairs

when it concerns orders from outside the Netherlands, but sabar aja!, wait and see, be patient. The favorite expression of Indies and Indonesian people is plan-plan- slowly-slowly, so don't hold your breath! But at least there will soon be a place where one can see many of our wares systematically ordered, priced and clearly described.
Many products have been made specially for Oooom Piet, with an emphasis on natural materials and traditional techniques. For now we shall try to tell some more right here and now about the items we have and sell. See below.
If you want to visit and browse at our home- please let us know by mail or text us and we'll tell you when is a good time for us. You may also try to reach us by phone, but we have found. that does not always work
We will announce special days for home sales, Silver Sundays and a variety of workshops when we have managed to empty our spacious home a bit after selling off of our surplus stock at the Textile Festival in Leiden end of March, perhaps at the Orchid Fair at the Botannical Gardens in Leiden as well, beginning of April, and of course at the Tong Tong Fair in May.
Cok will be staying with us for a while before and after the Tong Tong Fair, where she will be sewing kebaya's once more, and we are planning on some shop/cook/eat workshops with her in our kitchen as well.
Please check our site for updates or mail us if you want to be told about these events and shopping occasions by receiving mail about them.

textiles- batik, ikat, songket- and other special fabrics

We are proud of all the different kinds of handmade fabrics we have been selling for years now.
We try and support the art of batik and ikat-making by buying beatiful pieces of these cloths that may have been meant to wear but are such a pity to cut up and sew with. So we sell our best pieces of ikat, from Sumba, as well as the most exclusive kinds of handmade batik, as wall hangings.
But we also sell pillows and pillowcases, bed covers, albums, boxes and books using batik- mostly prints- and other special fabrics.
Of course we have clothes made with them as well, which we think of as 'timeless fashion': clothes for all ages and sizes, from tiny baby to XXXL. Next to our own designs we enjoy selling the standard kain panjang and sarung, the wrap-around and tube skirts still worn all over Indonesia. More and more often the generation born in Holland but with roots in Indonesia like to wear these. The women combine the traditional batik skirt with the equally traditional kebaya, both off the pasar-rack and made-to-order at our stand at the Pasar Malam Besar, the annual fair in the Hague. The men are a bit more hesitant about the batik or lurik skirts, but often come specially for the great variety of batik shirts that are also very popular with modern Indonesians.
For those new to Indonesian textiles we'd like to share some of what we know about their background and the techniques. We are not true experts, but over the years we have learned quite a bit, especially when visiting the makers- not only weavers,also dyers, people who stamp the batik or write it with a pen-like funnel, people who tie offf the yarn for an ikat. And then there are salespeople and books.
First of all batik, cloth decorated with the wax resist method, both tulis, 'written' batik, and cap, where copper stamps are used to apply the wax.
We have batik from Yogyakarta and Imogiri and Solo, on central Java, as well as from Java's north coast: Cirebon, Pekalongan, Lasem, and Tuban. Tuban is distinctly different, as they apply the wax to handwoven cloth made with handspun cotton, as opposed to the high percale cotton used elsewhere.
We especially like batik Madura, from the island to the north east of Java where we briefly stayed with an extended family of batik makers. On Madura the dyes are brushed on rather than soaking the cloth in one or more consecutive dye baths. This technique is also used for Bali batik, known for its bright colors and bold designs. We have kimono's and bed covers made with this batik tulis, that is to say that the big flowers are painted on by hand with a canting, a funnel for the hot wax. We also have batik cap Bali, with the wax applied by a copper batik stamp- animals and other small motifs. We use this batik for children's clothes.
-ikat, cloth with the yarn tied and dyed before weaving, so that the pattern is already visible once the yarn is on the loom. Often a body tension loom, so the weaver has close control. We have big hinggi from Sumba, sold as wall hangings, and selendang, scarves, and sarung, tube skirts, from Flores.
In Tenganan on Bali they have double ikat, called endek gerinsing, used for special ceremonies. Very few pieces can be made as the dyiing process is at least as time consuming as the tying of the yarn. But we try and buy one piece each purchase trip.
In Tanglad on Nusa Penida, island off the shore of Bali, they make cepok, which is also a ceremonial cloth.
On Bali they have one word for 'handwoven' and 'ikat', ndek. As they do on Java, where the word islurik, a cloth used for men's sarung, tube skirts, and the traditional striped jackets still worn in the Sultan's palace. Much ndek and lurik has stripes woven into the fabric using the ikat technique. The word ikat means 'to tie'- in this case the yarn for the weft, on Sumba they make warp ikat.
-pucuk rebung, made by crossing two shutlles with different color yarns to make a pattern of bamboo shoots, and more special techniques from the weavers of Pringgasela, in east Lombok. Reminiscent of tecniques used on Timor.
-supplementary weave using silver or gold yarn from near Bukittinggi on Sumatra and Gelgel on Bali- as with gerinsing: not always available.

wayang- shadow and stick puppets- and topeng- masks

-wayang golek, stick puppets with carved heads and 'real' clothes
-wayang kulit, leather shadow puppets, very refined puppets with the gods and other characters from the Ramayana stories, and other puppets, both animals and common folk, needed to tell the stories of Kancil. Kancil is the Indonesian version of Brer Rabbit crossed with Robin Hood: a clever and naughty little deer that outsmarts everyone, even tigers and crocodiles. If you want to see a full set: the children's museum of the KIT in Amsterdam let us buy them for them from Pak Ledjar in Yogya, one of the very few dalang, puppeteers who specialises in wayang kancil.
-wayang kulit by the late Balinese dalang Ketut Klinik and by his nephew.
-just to show the difference we also have some puppets made of paper, goat leather or wood. We are still hoping to import wayang rumput, puppets made with straw, which young cowherds make in the fields, and which are now used in modern, experimental dance theater by Ki Slamet in Solo
-painted wooden masks, such as used for wayang topeng, mask theater, or wayang wong', people theater, used in mask dancing by the dalang himself.
-Balinese masks: both unpainted and painted frog and 'barong' masks
-paper masks to put your whole head into- or to use as decoration

jewelry

We have gold- a little, and gold plated temple jewelry from Bali, and silver- a lot!, and super-cheap costume jewelry as used by dancers. As well as bracelets and necklaces with coconut shell and other cheap materials, especially for the younger crowd.
We are well-known for our brooches in animal shapes and for our large selection of filigree, a lace-like Yogya specialty. We also enjoy selling a special kind of pendant, blandong, little boxes meant to ward off evil by letting the baby wear one filled with a piece of its own umbilical cord- although in the Western world seen as the perfect new-mother gift- and another Bali baby gift: anklets with little bells.
Many of our earrings, rings, bracelets, necklaces and hangers we design ourselves, in collaboration with the silversmiths of Bali and Yogya. We have a weakness for semi-precious stones and amber and simple shapes. The stones and beads we buy from Indian and Afghan colleagues at the Pasar Malam Besar, the big fair in the Hague, or at the Pasar Burung, the bird market on Bali.
We also sell hooks to make your own earrings, string, wire and silver locks, as well as strings of sweet water pearls, agath and mystery materials from the sea and beads of sterling silver, coconut, bamboo, bone, and other materials.

toys

When we had just started some people thought we were a kite shop. We still sell both fighting kites and glasan, the special cutting string needed to bring your opponent's kite down.
But we specialise in Balinese kites, hand-made of parachute nylon on bamboo frames, waterproof (except for the glued-on details). Some easier to fly than others, all very decorative. If you hang them outdoors, but don't want them to fly, tie them securely!
We have toddler push toys and colorful animals on a string, singing spinning tops, noisemakers, mini pots, pans, dollhouse furniture. Many are made with recycled materials- cans, old exercise books, plastic cups.

books, boxes, cards and paper- and materials for arts and crafts

At Komang's home in Belahpane family and helpers make books, albums and picture frames with bean pods, banana bark and leaves and sand, and with our special textiles.
In Ubud we buy reams of handmade rice chaff paper and strong paper with pineapple and bamboo fibres. In Yogya we buy golden silk cocoons and a kind of parchment-like sheets made with those cocoons. Shredded these cocoons are meant to be used by paper makers- but we hope they will inspire many other uses. We sell lontar palm leaves which we have used here in classroom projects. From Sulawesi we have just imported big sheets of tapas, beaten treebark, a favorite with felt makers. At the Book Art Fair in Leiden people count on us for the little sheets of pure copper and for other natural materials which can be used in arts and crafts or simply as decoration.

what DON'T we sell?

We could go on and on- but let's just list some of what hasn't been mentioned yet:

-wood-carved animals- cecak, lizards, monkeys, bats and other creatures
-cutting boards, serving spoons and forks specially designed and carved for us in Pejeng, Bali by Komang Wir
-temple decorations as used in Hindu temples, such as offering standards and boxes, vanes, curtains and borders stencilled or painted with prada, gold.
-kitchen utensils: stone mortar and pestles, bamboo and wooden ladles, huge steel wajan, the Indonesian type wok, sateh grills and fans, teapots, kettles, coconut graters, knives. Oil lamps, dry-season-baby-showers, shoemakers needles and yarn.