Starter Kit. Idea 43 of 500. Cluster 2
Palm-leaf manuscript writing with a stylus, your name on an ola leaf to take home
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
Practise writing on an ola leaf with a stylus until you can write a name neatly, or find someone who already can. Set up at a heritage site entrance or a guesthouse for one weekend and write visitors' names on a leaf to take home, with a short card explaining the script. If most people who stop also buy, the idea has buyers.
- Who pays first
- Visitors at heritage sites and temples who want a light, personal souvenir with a story, their own name in an old script.
- What leaves today
- The island's manuscript tradition earns nothing from visitors; a name on an ola leaf sells the script and the skill, not a trinket.
Ask first
- Department of Cultural Affairs. Ask whether they know scribes who still write on ola leaves and would teach.
- Central Cultural Fund. Ask whether selling ola-leaf writing at their sites could be arranged.
Check before you spend
That the leaves are prepared properly and legally sourced, that the scribe is credited and paid, and what the site allows for selling there.
Find out these three numbers
- What will a visitor pay for their name written on an ola leaf?
- How many leaves can one scribe prepare in a day?
- Which heritage sites have visitors waiting with time to spare?
A comparison from the book
Sigiriya. Chapter Five
"And there is nothing to buy that is from there."
An ola leaf with your name on it is something truly from there.
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.