NO-ONE in Kumbung Baru really knows how the village acquired the specialist skills they have used to make clay roofing tiles (genteng), only that the craft was handed down through generations as a legacy from their ancestors.
Kumbung Baru, in the Pringgarata district about 10 kilometres from Mataram on the border of West and Central Lombok regencies, is visually indistinguishable from many other Lombok villages, but most of its people are engaged in tile-making.
“When I was a kid, around 1985, all our tiles were made with simple, manual equipment and the product was named genteng kepak (in the Sasak language of Lombok’s indigenous people, kepak means “flap”, or “swinging arms”), said Ruslan Effendi, who owns UD Sari Ayu, one Kumbung Baru’s tile producing businesses.
According to Ruslan, the keys to producing good roofing tiles are diligence, patience and thoroughness.
The first stage in the process of traditional tile-making was to prepare the raw material – the earth (tanah) – from a mixture of two soils.
Soil was taken from common ground in Kumbung Baru, dried in the sun and sifted to obtain a fine soil which was soaked in water for two or three days to produce an extract named Tanah Sari.
This material was mixed with clay soil, named Tanah Liat or Tanah Lempung, which was purchased from the neighbouring village of Bagu, to a ratio of one part extract to two parts clay.
People then stomped on the blend with their bare feet before storing the mixture for a day, according to a villager named Pundung.
The blend of soils was then shaped, with a wooden tool, into tiles which were arranged neatly on high shelving. The following day the tiles were placed in a standing position for one day before being put into the sun to dry and then fired in a furnace for five to six hours.
The traditional tile-making process, from blending the soils until firing was complete, took about one week, said Pundung.
This traditional method was overtaken in 1990 when a tile pressing machine was purchased from either Java or Bali (no one can now remember which) to modernise the process. At the same time, the villagers invested Rp9 million (US$1,000) in a special machine to mix the soils.
While some manual labour was still involved, the traditional method of making genteng kepak clearly was starting to become obsolete.
“Just after we started using the modern equipment, we found different sources for soils used in the blend in order to improve the quality of the product,” said Pundung.
Instead of Tanah Sari, a soil named Tanah Paras was purchased for Rp250,000 a truckload from the pottery village of Banyumulek and from Kuripan village, both in West Lombok.
Clay soil was purchased for Rp350,000 a truckload from Pringgarata village and even from as far as Teratak village in Central Lombok.
Using the modern equipment reduced the tile processing time from a week to three days but required a longer firing time of eight to 12 hours.
“In the process of firing 5,000 tiles, we would spend about Rp550,000 on a truckload of timber and coconut fibre which is a cost of about Rp750 a tile,” said Pundung.
The sale price of the roofing tiles varies according to type of tile, said Pundung, who gave the following prices per tile: Pejaten Rp900; Mantili Rp1,100; Morando Rp1,500; Mini Lombok Rp600; Mini Biasa (normal) Rp700; Bubungan Biasa (ordinary ridge tile) Rp1,500; Bubungan Besar (large ridge tile) Rp2,500; and Bubungan Besar Bundar (large round ridge tile) Rp3,000.
Unfortunately, said Pundung, a government policy for all agencies such as schools and government departments to use a different type of roofing tile for their buildings had badly affected the tile-makers of Kumbung Baru, he said.
Production at the village had declined drastically and many tile-makers had been forced to close due to bankruptcy, he said.
source:enchanting-lomboksumbawa.com
0 comments:
Post a Comment