Alexander Pelikan en Christian Kocx op Java

Last week here in Yogyakarta we did lots of things and and had so many impressions that it felt like being here a month.

The day after our arrival we took a bus to visit Yoga, it´s a more quiet city then Jakarta. We wandered around and took photos of anything we thought to be interesting.

The next day we started visiting the workshops. Something we really were looking forward to! The first workshop was a pottery. Pekerti started a 5 days course about design and we joined it for 2 days. It was very interesting to see how they tackle design.
We got a good view on how they make the local pottery, which is terracotta, fired bisque and afterwards stained. Artisans are also very handy in decorating the works with detailed reliefs.

For lunch we took fresh made Gado Gado of which Peli became a big fan.
Here the link to the youtube movie he uploaded:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1MfDJU8peA Considering food, I must say that these little eateries along the street are really great. They provide local fresh made food. Very Nice!

The third day after arrival we visited several wood workshops. It was amazing to see, that with the little tools they have and lots of handwork, they can achieve unbelievably much.
All the visits were done on the back of little scooter motorcycles...
in between we got the chance to ride some kilometres– felt still a bit strange but we will practice the coming days.

The next three days Peli en I split our ways, to visit workshops individually so we could be more efficient. We visited a batik-wood, a bamboo (2 day visit), a woodcarving, bamboo weaving, another batik-wood and a palmwood ("Aren" – oilpalm and "Glugu"- coconut) turning workshop.

At that point we already took 1300 pictures! In the evenings it took us quite a while to sort them all out.

And as if we didn´t have enough inspiration we went to the market "Beringharjo" on Sunday in Yoga. It´s a really big market of 3 stories high and packed with literally anything you could think of. From spare car parts over raw meat to household goods and clothing!

After a hot day full of inspiration and a good meal we went to bed.
The next morning we both had a lot of ideas and started making the first concepts and sketches. Peli went back to Yoga to buy some material samples we saw at the market that could serve as inspiration....

Stay tuned for this week's story...coming soon!