Sojourner Antiques: A selection of teak colonial, art deco and classic ethnic Javanese furniture...

This is an introduction in-brief about Sojourner Antiques.

"A stranger in a strange land....."

Firstly our store cum residence is situated in a small village in the regency of Bogor, West Java province, some 50 kilometers south of Jakarta nestled in the foothills of Mt. Salak.

Clients are welcome to visit on an appointment basis.

We cater to both local and international clients with a variety of interesting items and mainly focused on ethnic arts such as shadow puppets, golek puppets, batik and primitive enthropomorphic items; and genuine colonial, art-deco and ethnic Javanese rustic furniture and house furnishings native to Java and the Greater Sunda region.

We are committed to customer satisfaction and am committed to honest representation on the items offered and our focus is mainly on the genuine items, although we would also be able to supply reproduction items and furniture on an order basis.

Although Sojourner is loacted on the western region of the island of Java, (which technically would be Sunda) our specialties are on the items collected throughout the island and occasionally from Sumatra and Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo).

We have a limited and very select group of items on offer and these are mainly classified on the basis of rarity, age, provenance, base material, workmanship/decoration and symbolism. These are in the majority of cases, used and aged as they are items which have survived to contemporaneous times from being kept as household objects and in the case of wayang (leather) or wood puppets, from ex-performance sets acquired from retiring or dormant dhalangs or puppet masters.

We take pains to accurately describe our items such as, for example: "A wayang kulit set of shadow puppets (190 plus individual puppets and associated paraphanelia) en-suite with carrying case/box, circa late 19th through 20th century. Cirebon, West Java."

The first describes the nature of the items and this is followed by the number of items where applicable and our opinion of their age and provenance. And the variance in age would suggest, in our opinion; that certain puppets have been replaced by newer ones as they did not survive wear-and-tear from frequent and prolonged use by the dhalangs.

And in the case of furniture, an example would be: "A set of four Art-Deco teak chairs with carbriole legs and rounded splats and its associated round marble-top table. Circa 1940s - 1950s. [collected in] Central Java.

This would give the overall description and clients would have no reason to believe that these would be anything other and in case of internet buyers or telephone orders; we would be pleased to provide additional information and/or condition reports. These would typically describe if the furniture had been reassembled, refinished with any replacement parts/components or is still in its original state.

We currently have entire teak joglo and gladag (raised platform) houses, jineman (enclosed teak storage rooms with doors), patang aring and gebyok (teak house partitions) and associated house assessories for ethnic settings.

Also teak, amboyna and other aged wood furniture from colonial, art-deco and some ethnic primitive pieces from rural village areas. And Chinese items such as late Ching period locally manufactured furniture such as cabinets, chair-sets, altar-tables and parts of Chinese houses.

We also stock interesting batik cloth in kain panjang (long cloth of about 250 cm) and sarung. These range from the typical Javanese sogan genere from the court cities of Solo and Yogyakarta to the aberrant and flamboyant Pasisir (north coastal) types from Cirebon to Pekalongan and Lasem with Chinese and European influences. And rare ethnic local Peranakan Chinese clothing known as Baju or Kebaya Encim and belt buckles such as timang and lerep from central Java.

Lastly, an eclectic selection of leather shadow puppets from west to central Java, golek, gambyong and klithik or kruchil wood puppets.

If there are any specific items that you might be looking for or need for collecting or interior decoration, please feel free to let us know and if we don't have it currently, we probably know where to get it and can supply it on order.

Please contact us via email or telephone. We are always pleased to assist in any way we can for specific inquiries.

Sojourner Antiques

Works of Art

Bogor, West Java

email: tjhiebk@gmail.com

(+62) 085693985335