Emily Readett-Bayley re-launches her POSH Graffiti e-commerce business.
After a few weeks moving stock closer to her family home and upgrading the tech, all under the difficult lock down restrictions, Emily Readett-Bayley is happy to announce that she has re-launched poshgraffiti.com and is again selling her original hand-carved and gilded wooden letters and decorations online. Orders are now being sent out by Royal Mail on a daily basis by a team of young family members who find themselves unexpected back in the UK ( Some from as far away as Australia! )
This is mirrored by the woodcarvers co-operative in Bali who carve our letters. Here the farmers have moved their craft workshops into their family compounds and many people have moved back home to their villages as the tourism industry, which employed close to 70% of the island’s population, has suffered catastrophic collapse. They are all very happy to have POSH Graffiti orders and have re started work on the orders we placed in March.
After buying a beautiful woven Pandanus grass bag in the village of Bona in central Bali Emily went in search of the people who weave them. She had no luck finding any weavers in central Bali so widened her search to East Bali after a friend working on the Empower Project, an initiative working to help teenage girls stay in education, suggested she accompany her on her next visit to Desa Ban, a remote region on the slopes of Gunung Agung, the huge and active volcano that forms the core of the eastern part of the island. Emily’s husband and son joined the trip and with the help of some very enthusiastic school girls they were taken a tour of the village in search of weavers. Sadly in spite of finding plenty of bamboo basket weavers, including many of the school girls who were helping with the search, no palm leaf or Pandanus grass weavers were found. However in a conversation over coffee before the long drive home, Gede their teacher mentioned that he thought his mother knew a Lontar Palm weaver in a nearby village and he promised to look her up. Watch this space !
Emily would like to warn all visitors to SE Asia in the wet season of the very real threat of being bitten by an Aedes Aegypti mosquito carrying the Dengue Fever virus. This mosquito bites during daylight hours and lives in many densely populated areas of SE Asia. Unfortunately the body’s ability to fight the virus decreases each time it is infected and Emily can vouch for the fact that this, her second bout of Dengue Fever, gave her and excruciating headache and extremely high temperature which caused her heart rate to drop and left her hospitalised for 5 days on a re-hydration and paracetamol drip. Several members of her extended Balinese family also contracted the Dengue Fever virus around this time. Luckily doctors in countries where both conditions are common know exactly what to do but the risk is that the Dengue Fever can go undetected which is quite likely if you travel back to a country with cooler climes. For a reason that is yet to be explained the blood tests which have to be taken as soon as Dengue Fever is suspected also picked up a Typhoid infection. This may have been just an unlucky coincidence but after asking around locally, Emily discovered that these often occur simultaneously. Immunity to typhoid develops after exposure or vaccination although there are apparently several different strains but there is nothing you can do to protect yourself from Dengue Fever except avoid being bitten.
Emily returned to Indonesia in February 2019 to design some bird themed products which can be made by the indigenous Batin Sembilan people who live in the Hutan Harapan, Forest of Hope, the last remaining area of lowland rainforest in South Sumatra. It was the first Ecosystem Restoration Concession granted by the Indonesian government and The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) has supported the initiative for 18 years. It is home to many critically endangered birds as well as Sumatran tigers and Asian Elephant. A small community of Batin Sembilan , who are indigenous to the region, also live in the forest and the aim is to utilise their traditional weaving and craft skills and use sustainable materials such as rattan and pandanus grass that can be cultivated in the forest to make baskets, nest boxes and decorations suitable for sale by the RSPB. The hope is to kick start a community craft industry and offer an alternative to working in the palm oil plantations which completely surround this forest.
Weaving the spines of a large fern called Resam . Jambi Province, South Sumatra April 2019
