KAMINI: February 2010

Hi all!

Thank you for visiting our blog. We assume that you have no idea right now, who we are or what we do here. So, we suggest you to, please, spare a minute to read the 'about us' part and then continue with this post. =)

Ok, first of all, Kamini will launch various designs with different theme every 6 months from now. These themes will be presented to you through our stories and, of course, our designs. The next story is just a simple chronological events about what we went through to launch the first theme: Batik Sukapura.

Sukapura is actually a name of a village near Tasikmalaya (a city in West Java). In an exhibition at 2008, we met Mr Enung. He was a batik artisan from Sukapura. Amongst all kinds of batik we saw at that exhibiton, we found that these batik are quite unique and very attractive. The pattern were not too large, yet not contain too much detail. The colors are bright and very well combined. At a glance we knew that this patterns were just perfect to represent the image of Kamini's first designs.

So we decided to bought some and applied it on a bag design. At that time we told Mr Enung that we would go to his village one day and pick some more batik. Then he gave us his namecard and wrote how to get there from Bandung (including the name of the bus that we should take) behind the card. But destiny was not on our side; we lost the namecard!

Just a year later, in the same exhibition (apparently the exhibiton is held annually), our eyes caught those batik again. There, for the second time, we met Mr Enung. Luckily he still remembered us. That time we exchanged our numbers. We also kept the namecard highly carefully. =)

Few weeks later, the three of us were in a van on the way to Tasikmalaya. The driver dropped us at a small bus terminal named Padayungan after we refused to be taken straight to Sukapura (because it was way more expensive than if we continue the trip by a small bus called 'Bis Fajar'). Sukapura was about 500 km from Tasikmalaya and the bus ran not more than 30 km/h at first. The weather is very warm (well, it was more like hot) and the bus full of typical people in Indonesia's villages: nice and friendly. Just a few kilometres before we arrived at Mr Enung's home, one of the bus' tire was bursting. So we continued the trip by riding rented motorcycle, known as 'Ojek'. Long story short; we made it!

Just as we expected, we loved being there. Mr Enung and his family were totally nice. We were having a great afternoon there. They served us fried fresh fishes from their own pond, sambal, kerupuk, and warm delicious rice. While we were eating, Mr Enung and his wife told us stories about their life in Sukapura. About how they and the people in the village try to preserved their heritage, Batik Sukapura. It was too bad that we were not able to see the whole process of batik making, because it was weekend. Well, we guess that means we have to go there again some other time.

And of course, we brought you something from Sukapura too. We even have designed them very nicely, so you can use them anytime anywhere. They are available in combination pink batik-silver, green batik-broken white, blue batik-white, and black batik-gold. Bring our stories wherever you go and help us preserved one of Indonesian heritage, Batik Sukapura.

Wait for our next stories of Batik Sukapura!
See you soon! =)