In Jemari we use several different materials and it comes from different parts of Indonesia. The bags are often classified as rattan bags, because it is the most known material for bags, furniture and crafts. This is incorrect classification as there are many types of materials coming from different parts of Indonesia, having different properties and qualities, but all are processed similar way – drying. Most of those types have a common pattern – it grows in the jungle and you cannot really grow it in your garden. You need to harvest it in the wild nature. People pass the knowledge from generation to generation and it makes it local tradition even though rattan and other materials are known and popular globally.
Rattan
As already mentioned, it is one of the most common materials to used for crafts, furniture and bags. It has a very long tradition coming from different parts of Asia. Some of our Rattan comes from Kalimantan, which is Indonesian part of Borneo island. Rattan grows longer it also grows in diameter. For our bags, we want to have around 1-2 centimeters diameter wide. This is raw material, which is sliced to few meters long strings with knife or machete. The interesting part is that you do not use the inside part of rattan, perfect craft properties are in the skin of stem. It dries natural from fresh green and starting to catch the dry color of light beige. If you make a pattern, you need additional color and you can achieve it by boiling rattan in water and color, often black. The bag is hand woven at this stage and then finished drying on the sun or smoked.
Ata grass
There is plenty of Ata weed in the jungle and it has no purpose for growing other than stealing soil and sun from other plants. It is a proper weed and therefore harvest is not simple, it grows around the plants and small trees, spirals around and makes it hard to collect. It is thinner than rattan at the diameter is up to 1 cm. It is sliced with knife and special random tools are used to make the same size of the strings. We have seen artisans using the lids of beer bottles, cups or any metal pieces, where they can make a hole – that hole in the metal is your size of the string. As the raw Ata material is smaller, it is recognizable from rattan. In addition Ata has brown natural color compare to rattan, which is light beige.
Eceng Gondok
Eceng Gondok also known as water hyacinth is worldwide plant growing in lakes and ponds. If this plant is not controlled, it can completely take over the lake and kill everything in it as it will suck all the light and oxygen from the water for other plants or animals. We like our Eceng Gondok from Java as it makes great bags, which are durable and flexible. It brings another fashion style to our portfolio. It is bit thicker than rattan and other strings bags, but that allow us to create some nice patterns and design. No exception, it is also made from stem, but it is softer than rattan or Ata grass. You can feel the real difference between plant and flower.
Lontar
The main advantage of Lontar is the price as the material is cheaper than rattan, but because it is made from leaves, bag has lower protection against water. All other qualities like durability and smoothness is very similar to rattan. Our another bag material comes from Palm leaf. It grows high and has big crown with black fruit. After leaves are dried, artisans make the bags from it. Processed leaves can be in of 3 shades of brown. Very light brown almost like white, beige and dark shade of brown. Our artisans combine those colors for patterns.
