Getting Crafty!

(Alternative Title: Folkin' Awesome!)

Bangladesh has a very distinct style of folk art and we really enjoy it. As an artistic style, it overlaps with the style of painting on rickshaws, which we also like. A while ago we got some little cheap wooden stools to use as end tables and our plan was to paint them up folk-style.

The plan was really a rip-off of some furniture we saw at a shop geared toward foreigners. They were basic wooden tables decorated with rickshaw style art and they were charging an enormous price for them. We figured we could probably do just as well on the paint job and could manage it for about a tenth of what the fancy shop was charging. So that was the plan.

A few months ago, Jon went over to where you can buy cheap un-treated wood to get some end tables and a few other furniture items we needed. We never really got around to painting the stools though, so they have just been sitting around in raw form.

Just this past Friday we needed a few other table type things around the house. We think the realization that we’ve been here almost a year and that we’ve still got 6 months motivated us to finally get a few things we were putting off. We also have a visitor coming to stay with us, so we needed to get a few household matters together. Anyway, desperate for activities to fill the summer vacation hours, we took a family trip back over the raw-wood furniture area off a large road near Atticus’ school neighborhood .

It is a fun place to go actually, and everyone there always seems happy and generally surprised to help us. This isn’t high end stuff (it is the same place Taborok and his neighbors get furniture) but it is basic good wooden furniture and super cheap. (The stools were 150 taka each which is just a little over two US dollars!). We needed a table or desk for Atticus’ room and a little table next to our kitchen for that junk you always need a little table next to the kitchen for, and a couple more chairs.

It was especially fun this trip because in addition to excited helpful people, there were KITTENS! Little, adorable, only a few weeks old kittens just running around the furniture. Sam and Atticus immediately lost all focus on the furniture buying. Sam was delighted to get to pick one up (it was so tiny!) and everyone seemed to enjoy seeing our excitement over the kittens. The shopkeeper offered to give us one, but we couldn’t take it. It would be impractical and we are only here for a half a year more. (Not to mention that Sam has vowed to never own another cat.)
So we found our furniture and bought it. All in all, we got a desk, a table, and 2 chairs for about 16 US dollars. Not bad. We rode home on a rickshaw behind the rickshaw cart delivering our new bargains and discussed how we should really do our project of painting those stools.
So, we got home and decided to get our craft project going. Jon ran out and got our paint supplies. He got some spray paint to cover the wood for a base. Jon still has all his old skillz with a spray can and got them coated in no time.
Once the base was dry, it was time to get painting. We set up a makeshift studio in the corner and went to town. Atticus helped on some stripes here and there and Jon and Sam ended up each kind of designing their own table (we know, we know - we are all about collaboration, but the timing worked better this way). Anyway, Jon went for a more rickshaw art style, and based his flowery bench on the free-spirited painting style we see all around. He really captured a lot of the types of flowwers rickshaws are adorned with. Sam went for a more traditional Bangladeshi folk style and painted a pretty classically folk styled bird motif on hers. It was more like the art from Bengali revivalism, and which is found on the cultural programs and performance backgrounds here.

They turned out GREAT! We love them... so much that we took a bunch of pictures and are posting them for you to see. It was a fun little project and our benches did end up costing a fraction of the price and equally awesome. Hooray for DIY!

Here we are painting- we didn't want our clothes to get paint on them, which is the official response for why Jon and Atticus have so few clothes on in these pictures.

The finished products are below, with detail shots! Pretty great, huh?

Of course the crappy thing about DIY is the cleanup, but with enough turpentine fumes in the air, even that can be kind of fun.