Susi Johnston Bali Blog

As a suitable tribute to a marvelous material, here’s a chair by Colombian bamboo builder and designer Marcelo Villegas. While too much of newly-designed bamboo furniture looks like you have to give up something to use it (like comfort, stability and style, for example), Villegas’ works are artistic masterpieces and fulfill their comfort-functions admirably. We’ve heard that he’s involved in building and furniture design for the Nihiwatu villas expansion project on Sumba Island. Excellent news. Let this be an inspiration to us all, reach for the stars, and build a beautiful bamboo ladder to get there.

Brand spanking new, and smack up against Biku Tea Room, here’s CARGA. It’s a retail emporium taking traditional Indonesian ideas and materials and throwing them sideways. In delightful ways. Tradition with a twist. Read more…

In case you were wondering what that big wall of old shutters is doing near the beach in Seminyak, it’s a multi-faceted development called Potato Head Beach Club brought to you by the makers of Potato Head Jakarta (above), a description-defying place that opened back in January 2009. The brainchild of Indonesian international art collectors, Ronald Akili and Jason Gunawan, Potato Head (Jakarta) is an arty party place (bar, resto, music venue, hang central) frequented by socialites, creatives and neo-yuppies. Akili and Gunawan founded Ark Galerie in Jakarta first, then exploded their ideas outwards into the world of food-bev-tainment with Potato Head, calling in cordon-bleu trained foodie Sandra Budiman as exec chef and co-conspirator. Rumour has it the same faces are behind the soon-to-launch Potato Head Beach project in Bali. And that’s what makes it so interesting. Read more…

This year there are only five places to go Christmas shopping in Bali. Number Two: Word of Mouth, on Jalan Kunti near Bali Deli. The place is a showroom-playroom with a cafe and bar. Talk about one stop shopping. If you have to find gifts for everyone on a long list, the last thing you want to do in Bali is go hauling around in traffic, parking and unparking, and fuming with frustration. With that in mind, I’m focusing on places where you can get fed, watered, and find gobs of great gifts without wasting your playtime. Word of Mouth meets all of the above requirements, and then some. Read more…

I was contacted a few months ago by a niche events organiser asking if I would provide a cultural morning in Ubud for a celebrity wedding in August. I always welcome the opportunity to infect influential people with my incurable passion for all things Balinese, and this particular party was heavier with heavy influencers than most. It was the wedding of Jonathan Rutherfurd Best, London’s longstanding maestro of fine fêtes, fine food, and all manner of general capriciousness (above). The ceremony itself was held at Linda Garland’s estate (below), and several hundred guests were accommodated there and in various villas and hotels round about for a week or so to celebrate the occasion.

After a knock-down-drag-out welcome luncheon for legions of global glitterati lasting until well after midnight, (as knock-down-drag-out luncheons will do), we slept like the dead the whole way home in the car, and the next morning rose early to infect a phalanx of guests with a bit of Bali mojo. I’d roped my friend Tjok Raka Kerthyasa into providing a palace welcome and private tour of the sancta sanctorum of his family, the inner courtyards of the the Ubud royal palace. We planned it for ten or twelve guests, but seventy turned up bright and early and bleary eyed, in spite of inclement weather. Tjok Raka then proceeded to charm the designer pants off of all present. He’s good at that. As a co-ruling prince, and Bendesa Adat of Ubud (grand poobah of all things traditional and religious), and as a member of the Bali parliament, he is uniquely qualified to transmit the stories and spirit of Bali as it is manifested in Ubud. And so he did. Read more…

This year there are only five places to go Christmas shopping in Bali. Number One: Deus Ex Machina in Canggu, otherwise known as the Temple of Enthusiasm. I’m enthusiastic about shopping here, not only because there’s something for everyone (it’s a one stop shop), but also because you can eat. And listen to great music. And there’s no traffic jam to get there. And there’s no problem parking. And you can shop until 9:30 at night. Bring the whole gang, feed yourselves, get your shopping done, and don’t squander any precious playtime stuck in traffic or having aggro over where to get what for who. Read more…

You may remember Emerald Starr and Ken Ballard’s Sacred Mountain Sanctuary in the Sidemen Valley. It was a pioneering eco-resort with an earnest emphasis on eco. Now it is being “reloaded” at last, by the Karma Resorts’ developer, Selected Estates of Asia. Read more…

We’ve been applauding the Fowler Museum at UCLA for years. They’ve shown a keen understanding of Indonesian culture, and nobody beats the Fowler at curating and hanging a great show. Their shows always balance the aesthetic and the didactic in the best possible way. Now they’ve done it again, with Nini Towok’s Spinning Wheel, an exhibition of the traditional batik of Kerek, Java (above). Hats off, once again, to the museum’s curator of Asian and Pacific collections, Roy Hamilton. Read more…

We are in Brussels today, where the arbitrary is deliberate, and the unexpected is . . . well . . . expected. Eccentricity is ordinary, serendipity is a ubiquity, and we keep bumping into people we know, as if it were all scripted . . . for the theatre of the absurd. We love it. Discovery du jour, after a stroll through the marvelous Marolles flea market, was the showroom of K. Loan on Rue Blaes.

Bruno says it is like a set from Luc Besson’s Le Dernier Combat. In Brunese, that means, “it’s great.” It is. The photos here do not do it justice, nor does their tiny website. Here is a master of mise en place, who takes weathered industrial steel and juxtaposes ordinary objects and extraordinary ones against them in such a way that voilà! it is a still life. Everybody thinks they can do the same these days. But they are wrong. It takes the eye of one such as K. Loan. A very rare eye indeed. Delightful.

This pair of bowls is exquisite. It is the pairing that makes them so. Together, they tell us so much about blue. And about how we see objects in the world.

Offered at Bonham’s Chinese & Asian sale on 10 May in Knightsbridge. The estimate is £600 to £1,000 the pair, and they come with a Japanese wood box. They would make a marvelous wedding gift.

Image © 2002-2010 Bonhams 1793 Ltd.