Starter Kit. Idea 38 of 500. Cluster 2
Lacquerware workshops
The mechanism, from the book
The craft cannot be copied and the object can. In Europe people queue to watch glass being blown and then buy the glass.
The first step
Track down a lacquerware workshop and spend an hour watching how colour is worked into the turned wood. Ask the maker to run a short session where visitors decorate a small bowl themselves. Set a price, then offer it to two tour operators whose routes pass nearby. One operator adding the stop to a scheduled tour is your proof.
- Who pays first
- Tour operators running cultural routes who want a hands-on stop their groups will talk about, and the groups themselves.
- What leaves today
- Lacquerware survives as a small souvenir trade; a workshop sells the skill and keeps the makers working at a better rate.
Ask first
- National Crafts Council. Ask which lacquer workers they know and whether they would teach visitors.
Check before you spend
That the lacquer and dyes used are safe to handle, that the room is ventilated, and that the craftsman is paid fairly for teaching.
Find out these three numbers
- What will a visitor pay to make one lacquered piece?
- How long does a piece take before it can travel?
- Which craft villages make lacquerware that visitors can reach?
A comparison from the book
Sri Lanka House. Chapter Seventeen
"You are selling the thing that cannot be copied"
Teach the skill, and the visitor values the object far more.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.