Starter Kit. Idea 47 of 500. Cluster 3
Salt and pepper sets in the shape of the rock
The mechanism, from the book
The Zermatt water bottle. Sigiriya has not got a stone with its own name on it.
The first step
Sketch a salt and pepper set in the shape of the rock and ask a local potter or woodturner to make five prototypes at a fixed price. Take a pair to three hotel gift shops in the area, ask what they would pay wholesale, and ask for a trial order. One order, with a price per set, is your proof.
- Who pays first
- Hotel gift shops near the rock, and visitors who want a useful, witty object that will sit on their table for years.
- What leaves today
- Sigiriya has no object in its own shape to sell; every visitor leaves with photographs and nothing made here.
Ask first
- National Crafts Council. Ask which potters or carvers could make small homeware in quantity.
- Sri Lanka Standards Institution. Ask what standard tableware that touches food should meet.
Check before you spend
That the glaze or finish is safe for food, that the design is your own, and that shops near the site will take stock on fair terms.
Find out these three numbers
- What will a visitor pay for a salt and pepper set shaped like the rock?
- How many sets can one maker produce in a week?
- How many sets break in a suitcase on the way home?
A comparison from the book
Zermatt. Chapter Five
"a very small bar of chocolate cost 5 francs. Shaped like the mountain."
A shape alone made a small chocolate bar worth carrying home.
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.