The Process of Bakepang Wood

Bakepang wood processes into aesthetic craft with currency value. The showroom is a simple place, located in Saharjo Street No. 62 A in Tebet, South Jakarta. It is called Kayu Tangi Art. The name itself is taken from one of the district in Banjarmasin, South Kalimantan. It so happens that the owner, Firdaus, is a native and born Banjarmasin.

“Yes, that is just a name for the business, I took it off a place in Banjarmasin,” agreed Firdaus.

Beginning his trade approximately twenty years back, in 1990, Firdaus was an employee for a foreign company. When his work contract was due, he decided to start a self-management business. The wooden based crafts became his choice.

“I’ve had my share of working in Seismic Survey, also in a foreign company, in the mapping division. When my contract completed in around 1982, that was when I decide to do self-management business,” he told the story.

Starting the business with humbleness, in the beginning Kayu Tangi Art was pioneered by three workers alone. Those people were Firdaus, his wife, and an amployee. “It was fueled by guts alone,” he reminisced.

Wooden shades; room partitions; lamp holders; and floor mats, were his debut products. Kayu Tangi Art products then received quite good response from the market.

The best market condition as Firdaus remembers it is during the governess of the late Presiden Soeharto. Back then there plenty of exhibition events with economical selling-stand costs. Just like the crafts exhibition event of KIDI (Indonesia’s Crafts in Interiors). In that exhibition the independent small mid units (UMKM) were only charged with affordable selling-stand costs.

“However the selection was quite strict. What’s fun is, during the exhibition there were usually government officials that browse to then make their purchases. Other than that there were plenty of purchasers from Singapore that came. It seemed they were exclusively invited,” Firdaus recalled.

After twenty years of engaging in the wooden-based crafts business, nowadays Firdaus starts to attempt a breakthrough in the media used. Though still utilizing wood as the base material, this time the wood used has a pretty unique texture. It is bakepang wood.

Bakepang wood has a unique texture, because basically it is wood that has already been digested by worms. It is those parts that have been masticated by the worms that shape the special textures on the bakepang wood. Firdaus intentionally import the bakepang wood raw material from his hometown of Banjarmasin. According to him, bakepang wood is easily found in the Kalimantan region.

“There are many logging companies, and the hollowed woods are usually unused. Those discarded woods are left lying around by the rivers. It is then that they got eaten up by the worms,” he explained.

Firdaus is rather creative in recycling unused material as his raw material. The bakepang wood which is basically wood waste can be processed into crafts items of aesthetics with high profit value and its own enthusiast community.

Nowadays, using bakepang wood as the raw material, he manufactures partitions, picture frames, tables, chairs, and lamp stands. Aside from those he also makes ornaments such as the congklak game set, containers for cooking herbs, ashtrays, etc.

The retail prices of the products vary, from the pencil case of eight thousand rupiah to the living room table for five million rupiah. Firdaus wishes that the market keeps on recovering as it used to be, thus his business can develop more and sustain its existence.