Sukarara is a weaving craft area that has been known by the people of Lombok, which has now developed rapidly into a home industry after being visited by many domestic and foreign tourists, the village of Sukarara in Jonggat district, Central Lombok district has changed its face from the previous situation since not yet known by tourists.
How to go to Sukarara village, from Mataram you have to use the main road to the city of Praya about 7 km before reaching the city of Praya there is a direction sign that says SUKARARA turns right through the not so wide asphalt road but now this road has been given violence.
Violated with a good type of asphalt and the addition of widening and shoulder of the standard road there is a large mosque in the corner of the junction about 500 meters in. Now this is where you will see the different Sukarara faces, I mean along the road about 2 km to the south there is an art shop that transparently accentuates woven results.
The voices of this village’s distinctive character, the sound “Belide”, a kind of wooden sword-shaped object used as a tool to tighten threads while weaving “no taktak taktak” throughout this village, will dominate more than other voices. , middle-aged and old in front of the store demonstrating the process of making ikat weaving on each art shop terrace which has a shop sign.
What we see is that this art shop has a variety of shop sizes, there are art shops that are large, medium and small, please stop where once you have chosen a parking spot in front of a shop, a shop employee will greet you with a smile while opening your car door then say hello welcome.
Local guides will let you enter to see the designs and colors of favorite that you like, after seeing the shopkeeper will invite you to the front of the shop to see the demonstration of the weaving process if you want to try to feel the weaving process you can ask try it and will teach the ways.
After feeling the way of the manufacturing process, you can also ask from what yarn material is used for weaving and what coloring ingredients are used to color it, usually every visitor who comes and seems to want to know exactly what the shopkeeper will usually invite you to go around into the village behind the shop to see the villagers of Sukarara who were undergoing weaving activities because weaving in Sukarara village was the livelihood of the local people.
In the spare time, besides weaving the population, it is also a farmer and farm laborer, the uniqueness of the Sukarara village, all women seem obligatory to weave because of the limited sources of livelihood to help the family economy because there are no industrial factories in Lombok like many in Java and even girls. girls in Sukarara are not permitted to marry by the rules of the village awik-awik if they cannot weave because this is a village Awik-awik(village role) that should not be violated on the grounds that if you cannot weave you want to eat what your children will, well these words are often I heard.
After the development of tourism in Lombok more and more foreign Tourists and domestic tourists who bought handicrafts and greatly opened up opportunities for income of the Sukarara people apart from the results of farming but on the contrary now women in Sukarara village consider weaving work to be the main job rather than farming in the fields.
Woven fabric cannot be compared to ordinary fabric, woven fabric is an expensive product whose manufacturing process is very thorough and takes a long time with very distinctive patterns spun with color from natural materials, especially dark colors for reddish brown color using tree fibers mahogany, teak stems for light brown, tamarind seeds for ground brown color and rotten banana stems for dark brown color
In addition, the ingredients of grape are mixed with mangoesteen peel for purple while the colors pink, yellow, green and blue are ingredients that are difficult to obtain from natural dyes craftsmen get it from chemicals purchased from stores for the manufacturing process, you can also ask to try it on here.
Just for a pose, take pictures to be posted on Facebook. Besides that, you can also request to wear Lombok-style clothes or dress up like a Lombok bride made from woven fabric and take a photo behind the stage house in the form of a rice barn, like the icon of the Lombok area. of course with these photos you can remember your visit to the village of Sukarara.
