Dayak - The Tourist Market

The Tourist Market
In Kaltim, some shop owners or their employee's travel to the interior to purchase art objects and commission specific pieces for sale on the coast. Several stores purchase painted shields, carvings and masks made by Dayaks or others that have settled in Samarinda. Since Kaltim receives the bulk of the tourists to Kalimantan, the souvenir and antique stores here are the most active. In the other provinces, the choice is more restricted. Ships-of-the-dead, made from gutta-percha and complete with a crew of spirits are ubiquitous in Kalsel, Kalbar and Kalteng. These ships can also be purchased at the

Sarinah department stores in Jakarta. All the ships are made in a few Ngaju villages on the lower Kahayaan River. Genuine antique Dayak pieces are few, but all the shops display plenty of fakes. Some are good enough to fool even experts. Some of the copies are carved by Dayaks, while others are produced in Java and Bali for sale either locally or to be shipped to Borneo. Some of these fakes are exact replicas of ancient art, copied from photographs and left outside to weather for a couple of years until the proper patina are achieved. Others are polished and rubbed in strategic places so that they appear to have been used for generations.

Genuine old pieces rarely find their way on the market. A dealer might be able to find an object for sale in a remote village, but there are few old ones left, and these are charged with spiritual power. No matter how tempting the offer, many villages are understandably reluctant to part with these. Occasionally a village or individual, badly in need of cash, brings a carving or other art piece to town for sale. Sadly, the paid price is often ridiculously low. Foreigners who travel to remote villages in search of antiques almost always return disappointed. Even newly made items such as baby carriers are difficult to purchase, as they were made for a specific purpose, as they were made for a specific purpose and substitutes are not readily available. An inquiry is often greeted with an astronomical price, just to discourage further bargaining. Of course, if the owner happens at that time to be strapped for cash, the situation could be quite different. The lakeside village of Tanjung Isuy is a special case. Here, the tourist trade has fostered the continued production of traditional weavings made from local plant fibers, an art form otherwise almost extinct. Because of the availability of modern clothing, this cloth is found nowhere else in Borneo except the Iban areas in Malaysian Borneo. Tanjung Isuy is the most visited Dayak Village in Kalimantan. Within relatively easy reach of Samarinda, this village is easy to get to, and guarantees a traditional, if perhaps uninspired, show.