Bali Jewellery

The earliest Balinese silver jewelry designs were copies of traditional gold jewelry. The Balinese use beautiful repousee silver bowls and implements for their temple offerings but for jewelry they prefer gold, and would rather go without than wear silver. As a result, silver jewelry developed only recently and has always been an export product. As the market for silver grew, there was pressure to diversify and motifs from many cultures were quickly diffused through the community of smiths. The use by artisans of multicultural motifs is an ancient practice. Gold jewelry found from early Egypt, Greece, Phoenicia, Persia and later Rome, all display motifs borrowed from one another. The migration of skilled craftsmen, especially goldsmiths, from dying to emerging civilizations is also an age old trend.

While in the ancient world migration and Phoenician traders were responsible for slowly diffusing ideas, the process has become almost instantaneous with the advent of television, airplanes and fax machines. Today, buyers come to Bali from all over the world. Designers flock to the island as well. They are drawn by the sympathetic environment as much as by the skill of the craftsmen. Bali seems to nurture creativity. It is a setting in which the seeds of one's imagination germinate with the same careless abandon as those of the lush vegetation. Many of the cottage industries produce work for foreign designers but the creative process is almost always a collaboration in which the influence of the Balinese craftsmen is readily apparent in the finished product.