Rumah Keramik Tanah Baru - Depok.
This time it’s a bit unique. We came down to this place due to invitation of our Business Partner for Family Gathering. I decided to join the invitation almost without thinking to long due to this clay stuff, since I strongly confident that this is good for children and also for my wife that has interest on handicraft stuff.
So here we go, long the way down to Depok, with bit confusion and several times got lost on the way to the place, finally we reach to the destination. A warm and very tidy place with bunches of trees and surprisingly, there are lot of endangered trees around the place.
We got very warm greetings from host and lead us enter the main “Pendopo” that seems become their main building in this entry area. The building it self build from wood and bricks with Javanese architecture that has several set of wooden dinning table, which has Ceramic tile on top of it, combined with candle ceramic bowl side by side with ceramic vase that hose a bunch of flowers. Very nice setting. One of the unique thing is the lighting that been setup in the middle of the building that made from lot of “silk cocoon” stuffed with tiny Christmas tree light every one of them.
We got choice of “The Sereh” or “Gula Asam” combined with very nice “Pisang Goreng Kalimantan”, “Singkong Goreng” and traditional glutinous ball in Coconut Crisp or “Klepon”…. Especially for me, “The Sereh” is very erotic ……. It has been claim by the host that The Sereh may restore your freshness in a short while after you have it. Regardless what he say, for me the combination of “The Sereh” and “Klepon” look very nice indeed.
One thing about Pisang “Kepok” Kalimantan that meant to make a very nice “Pisang Goreng” is very unique, since it may not be able to eat in raw form like the other banana, it has to be fried before it unique sweetness and a bit sour taste appear. Because if you may eat it in raw, it will taste very rough and dry. Again, this “Pisang Goreng” is their special chef recommendation menu.
Back to the main activities, we have to wait for a while before the venue begins with some introduction why this place builds and what meant for? So, this place called Rumah Keramik Tanah Baru, belong to F. Widyanto a maestro in a ceramic or clay craft, and especially this place build to introduce clay to younger generation, and it has open house every weekend and has several clay stuff fun program to try out.
Well, in short speech, we’ve been brought for in-house tour to introduce several places, seems they have several “traditional bungalow” for the one who wants to spend the night here, but need to understand that they do not provide TV, but you may still have to surf the .net since they have WiFi around the place. This in-house tour may takes about 30 minutes before we reach the final destination, the Clay Workshop.
First they brought us to a house, well this is actually a “buffalo stall” but now converted into a nice bungalow that you may stay for overnight, but no TV around …… There are several interesting detail in this bungalow since some of the items made creatively from tradional unused things, such as batik stamps made for light decoration.
The very interesting thing is the light that I thought was a Christmas light chain that used to be found in Christmas tree, but it doesn’t. Once you were closer to that thing you will notice that the light was made from silkworm cocoon! The tiny bulp were creatively stuff into silkworm cocoon, each of them, very creative, and according to the host that this is one of the masterpiece that may not be sold even though they often to receive very high offer from some guests.
Now, back to the workshop, after small tour we not seated in three long table and we have a tennis ball size raw-clay in front of each of us. After short guide presentation what and how, and a little demo, we may start create any form we want from clay. And it was not easy after all ………..
But it is very nice experience yet very unique …..
Last but not least, The activity closed by very nice lunch, several kind of traditional dishes.
Oh, you may free to visit this place since they have open house every weekend, just to see around or to taste their unique “Teh Sereh” or other traditional dishes that you may not be able to find in other places.
