Starter Kit. Idea 46 of 500. Cluster 3
Carved stone miniatures of heritage sites
The mechanism, from the book
The Zermatt water bottle. Sigiriya has not got a stone with its own name on it.
The first step
Commission one stone carver to make 10 small miniatures of the nearest heritage site at a fixed price. Take them to a shop near the ticket office, a guesthouse reception and a hotel shop, and ask each to sell them for a week on commission. Units sold, and the price visitors paid without haggling, tell you whether to order a larger batch.
- Who pays first
- Visitors leaving a heritage site who want a solid souvenir of the place made by a local hand, and the shops that sell to them.
- What leaves today
- Souvenirs sold at the sites are often imported; a carving of the site by a local carver keeps the souvenir spending on the island.
Ask first
- National Crafts Council. Ask which stone carvers they work with and whether they supply shops.
- Central Cultural Fund. Ask whether miniatures of their sites could be sold in the site shops.
Check before you spend
Where the stone can be legally quarried or bought, and whether selling at or near the site needs permission from its managers.
Find out these three numbers
- What will a visitor pay for a carved miniature of the rock?
- How many miniatures can one carver make in a week?
- Which shops near the sites would stock them?
A comparison from the book
Sigiriya. Chapter Five
"There is not, as far as I could see, even a stone with the name of the place carved"
Start with the thing the book found missing: a stone with the place's name.
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.