Starter Kit. Idea 49 of 500. Cluster 3
Coconut shell and husk craft: bowls, spoons, lamps, jewellery, buttons
The mechanism, from the book
The Zermatt water bottle. Sigiriya has not got a stone with its own name on it.
The first step
Buy a dozen coconut shell bowls and spoons from a village maker, sand and oil them properly, and photograph them well. Offer them to a café or homeware shop in Colombo and, by message with photographs, to a Sri Lankan shop in London at a stated wholesale price. A trial order from either proves the finish sells.
- Who pays first
- Homeware shops in Colombo and abroad, and cafés that want natural serving ware with a story behind it.
- What leaves today
- Coconut shells are burned or thrown away as waste; a finished bowl turns the same shell into a product priced as design.
Ask first
- Coconut Development Authority. Ask where to buy clean shells and husk in steady quantity.
- National Crafts Council. Ask which shell crafters they know and what training exists.
Check before you spend
That shells and husk come from a steady supply, that items touching food are finished safely, and whether buyers abroad need a treatment certificate.
Find out these three numbers
- What does a shop near the site pay for a shell bowl?
- How many shells does one maker use in a week?
- Which buyers abroad stock coconut-shell homeware?
A comparison from the book
Sigiriya. Chapter Five
"made locally, by people whose names could be on the label"
Coconut shell is one of the book's own souvenir materials, made by named people.
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.