Accommodation by Design: Which Bali House Can Make the Cut?
It’s a new website for the traveller who puts design excellence on the top of their priority list for holiday accommodation. Ok, so you have the budget to travel where and how you wish. Why should you stay somewhere that is less beautiful than your own homes? Why should you suffer from the mediocre aesthetic experience most five-star luxury resorts serve up? Go to Ultimate Hides.
Properties offered for rent on the site are published masterpiece homes designed by the likes of Tadao Andao, Ken Latona, Justin Long Pike Withers, and Philip Cox.
This elite travel newcomer so far handles properties in Australia, China, Japan and Switzerland. Selective global expansion is certain, but if you want your property listed it must meet Ultimate Hides’ stated criteria: “important architectural design, sustainability, privacy, artistic merits, inspirational virtues, natural environment”. So who in Bali makes the grade? I’m waiting with bated breath to see the first Bali property on Ultimate Hides. To get listed go to their sign-up page.
Who Put the “Boutique” in Batik?
Quarzia did. This boutique-chic little enterprise has been making slinky high art batik fashion in silk for years. Mixing a Marimekko-meets-Peter-Max eye for pattern with a subtle sense of colour and an acute understanding of cut, their clothes have given gorgeousity to the gorgeous-in-the-know of Bali (mostly Italians) for quite some time. Well last night the well-guarded secret went public.
Quarzia was a teensy little boite of a shop on the golden mile of Jalan Oberoi in Seminyak, until last week. Proprietors Marco and Simonetta, a design dream team from Bergamo have broken out from the closed circle of cognoscenti in Bali and are ready to take on the world.
They remodeled and hugely expanded their little shop and now it’s “wow”. Last night was the grand re-opening, and how grand it was, as in grandissimo, as only Bali’s Italian community can manifest. From sunset ’til long after dark the Corso-Como-cruising crowd in attendance at the opening bash sipped Negronis and slinked about in clumps, kissing, ciao-bella-ing and making like it was the day the new collections came in on Via Montenapoleane. One Anglo pundit was heard to exclaim, “It’s so Italian I can’t think straight!” But I think it was the Negronis from the free-flowing streetside bar that befuddled her mind.
Marco and Simonetta are generous by nature, and they warmly welcomed the SMS-invited crowd to their re-opening. Seen pawing the beautifully bias-cut silk batiks were artist Filipo Sciascia, designer-gallerista Susanna of Biasa, Bona Kaya Gaya the Duchessa of Seminyak, archaeologist-extraordinaire Ambra Calo (the blonde Laura Croft of Indonesia), architect Mauro Garavoglia, and everyone’s favourite warm-hearted perpetual convent-girl, Elisa Grattapaglia. Aside from the usual Italo-Indo suspects we caught up with Sophie Digby of The Yak Magazine, modern marquetier Etienne d’Souza, textile and costume designer Simon Marks and throngs of other drop-dead-gorgeous glamourati-Balinisti. There were acres of young silken flesh spread on the front steps to compete with Quarzia’s silk batik fashion; it’s the second generation of Italo-Indos, I think, and watch out for them. The only thing missing was Pino Confessa, the viviacious and congenial Honorary Consul of Italy for Bali (who never misses a good party). Perhaps he was busy with an Italian passport-holder tangled up in a messy Vespa crash?
I promise to post photos of the party as soon as Marco and Simonetta sleep off the Negroni hangovers and send me some. (I hope I get the multi-seamed indigo and ecru skirt as a prize for writing this. Although I would have written just as flattering a review skirt or no skirt. And this post is not nearly so flattering as that skirt will be on me!)
(Here are the photos I promised! Plenty of party pix below the cut.)
Best-Looking Bali Villas Site
Maison Bulle was Pierre Cardin’s kinky bubble house near Cannes where he welcomed the bright young things of Europe during his heyday. Now the name of Cardin’s Cannes crash pad has been recycled by a French expat for her super stylish website showcasing super special rental villas in Bali. There’s a double entendre in the name that only Indonesia expats would understand. White expats here are called bule meaning “albino”, usually an albino cow, which is basically a derogatory term like “nigger”. Western-style houses are known as rumah bule. Drop one “l” from “Bulle”, and there you have it.
Maison Bulle offers a collection of properties that are not your ordinary luxury villas. These are the kind of places one usually finds out about only from close friends. All of the properties are idiosyncratic, charming private homes created by people with a creative bent. Some are rustic and simple, others cushy colonial-style places that recall something out of Somerset Maugham. None are standard-issue, generic luxury rentals, so don’t expect predictability, expect the unexpected. In selecting properties for inclusion Maison Bulle declares, “Character is our selective criteria.”
The site also features pages on Bali’s ne plus ultra options for dining, nightlife, shopping and activities. This is a godsend for we long-term Bali residents who are constantly being asked by friends-of-friends about everything Bali, especially places to stay. It can be a bit tedious. It was exactly this which motivated the creation of Maison Bulle. According to their very well written site:
Maison Bulle was born out of a phone call. A call repeated year after year, always the same:
“Would you know of a house….for friends, friends of friends, relatives coming to Bali for a holiday? Something nice, great, haven like…’
“These requests, of course, did not come unwarranted: a renowned and lasting relationship with the island, a discerning taste for beauty, comfort, great food and hospitality sent them forth. Thus the idea for an open ‘rolodex’ came about… giving easy access to those of you who share our taste and sensibility in your search to experience the perfect holiday.
Bactrian Gold on Tour in America
This is a dazzling travelling exhibition not to be missed. Hidden Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul is touring US museums until September of next year. The show includes over 200 pieces dating from 2200 BC to 200 AD, which were thought to have been looted from the National Museum in Kabul during recent years of ongoing conflict in the country. In August 2003 Afghan president Hamid Karzai announced that the treasures had been found in a presidential palace bank vault. Gold ornaments from the Bactrian hoard excavated at Tillya Tepe are the real show-stoppers of the touring treasures. Wear a headscarf when you go to see the exhibition – - not as a gesture of respect for the predominantly Muslim culture of Afghanistan, but to keep your jaw from dropping to the floor.
Find complete information on National Geographic’s special site dedicated to the exhibition, including exhibition dates in Washington DC, San Francisco, Houston and New York.
Images, National Museum of Afghanistan, ©Thierry Ollivier / Musée Guimet
Java Folk Art Furniture Book
My old friend David Smith is an enigmatic character who divides his time between three islands: Bali, Java and Vashon Island near Seattle. His business is furniture, and he’s been collecting antiques in Java for 20 years. As the supply of antiques in the field dwindled, David shifted his focus to furniture making. He has a workshop in the historic town of Blitar in East Java with about 100 local workers crafting furniture for his retail showroom in Seattle and for contract clients.
During two decades of antique-hunting in Java, David has been setting aside his favourite finds for his own enjoyment and has amassed an astounding collection. The pieces he prefers are folk-art furniture from the Ponorogo area, and this is his collection’s strongest suit. He is currently preparing an enormous coffee table book on the collection, to be published in 2009. Art dealer and author Bruce Carpenter is working on the text now.
The Puget Sound Business Journal ran an article on David last month, with a nice portrait, in which he looks – - as ever – - enigmatic.
Photos Dan Schlatter
Bali Commercial Photog with Technical Saavy
I keep coming across the work of a particular Indonesian photographer, Imp Winartho. His Ubud royal cremation photos are among the most dramatic and technically perfect out there. Frankly, I don’t know how he managed to process his raw files and perfect his finished work so quickly, as his images were posted almost before the cremation pyre cooled off. This gives me the impression that Imp is a die-hard, serious, professional photographer, and a browse through his site and his flickr photostream confirms this. This man was apparently born with a camera in his hands.
Imp gets plenty of interesting jobs. Glamourous weddings, fab luxury villas, and his stock is an editor’s dream. He photographed Pantai Lima, the villa complex where we attended a sneak preview event last week. His pix of the party (and the flower balls in the pool) are great.
Chris Lehrecke Furniture : It Just Doesn’t Get Any Better Than This
Almost roshi-like in his clarity, acuity, devotion and low profile, Chris Lehrecke is a modern furniture master whose studio in upstate New York recalls Shaker values in its robust simplicity. Yet Shaker furniture his is not. The simplicity is there, and the earnest sobriety. Yet here is a collection that teaches us that what others might call asceticism is in fact abundance. Aesthetic discipline and adherence to one’s principles is not in fact self-restraint, it’s liberation. This furniture is strong, sculptural, primitive, modern, brut, and refined at the same time. And the proportions are perfect, which is something that cannot be taught. You have it or you don’t. Click. Look. Read. Learn. Buy.
San Francisco Asian Art Museum Supporters Visit Macan Tidur
The “Jade Circle” of the San Francisco Asian Art Museum visited Macan Tidur last week during a cultural tour of Bali. Accompanied by chief curator, Forrest McGill, they arrived dressed in Balinese adat clothing, looking elegant. It wasn’t “fancy dress day” for the Jade Circle, they were dressed to attend the royal cremation ceremony taking place in Ubud later that day.
During the morning, I delivered a lecture on diversity in Balinese textile traditions, which was followed by a lively discussion and some hands-on study of textiles. I had put up an entire wall of traditional Balinese textiles from my collection, which looked a bit like a souk, but certainly illustrated the tremendous diversity of Balinese textiles. From prada to ider-ider with talismanic drawings, the variety of weavings draped on the gallery hanging bars was dizzying.
The Nature of Bali Fashion Week ’08
The theme of this year’s Bali Fashion Week is “Fashion Meets Nature.” I’m not sure what that means in style terms, but be there from 24 to 30 August and find out for yourself. Perhaps bamboo bikinis and pineapple fiber Carmen Miranda tango dresses? Who knows. Anyhow, this is an ideal opportunity to get a fashion foot in the door for the major world fashion weeks that Indonesian designers are sure to invade in years ahead. Make friends now and get a catwalk-side seat in 2012 for the best Indo-designers’ shows in Paris and Milano.
Best Photog Blog in Bali : Rio Helmi
Rio Helmi is one of the most extraordinary characters in Bali. He’s best known as a photographer of culture, travel, buildings and food (sometimes), but there is much more to him than that (as if that wasn’t enough). I wouldn’t be so presumptuous as to describe Rio here, and risk making the poor fellow blush when his RSS feed finds this post. I will instead refer you to his newly established blog, which is a feast of fine content.