FIRST DIBS FROM KATHMANDU: And save 30%
Greetings to all our family and friends! Thank you for your emails and updates. It sounds like we missed a pretty good time in Vancouver; we weren’t sure whether the tremor we felt here was the shock wave from Chile or Canada jumping up and down after the men’s gold medal on Sunday.
We are now in Kathmandu, a place that doesn’t really care about the Olympic Games. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t know how to celebrate. One of the year’s biggest festivals, Holi, just finished. Somewhere there may be something religious about it, but mostly it’s an excuse to get very boisterous and spray everybody with water and coloured dye. The city shuts down, since if the water bombers from the roof-tops don’t get you, the roving bands of teenage boys will.
Apart from that, we have been busy getting our Nepal shipment together. It is one of our favourites, since we get to work with Malik, our Tibetan jeweler, and scour the bazaars of this most interesting of cities. And we have found treasure!
As a special offer to you all, we are posting a selection of our findings here, and if anyone is interested in something let us know, and we will save it for you. In addition, if you commit now, we will mark it down 30% from the retail price. Our shipment will be underway soon, and should arrive in Vancouver early in May. When it arrives, we will ensure everything is in good order, contact you, and take your credit card information for a 30% deposit. At that point it depends where you are as to how we will get the item(s) to you. Delivery can be arranged in person, if we are in the vicinity, by post, or at one of our sales events. For those dates see our 2010 sales schedule on the blog home page or on our website (https://www.kebeandfast.com). Enquiries can be made to katheryn@kebeandfast.com.
Last year we ran out of singing bowls early on in the season; this year we have found a great source. We have made contact with the Tuladhar family, brass and bronze casters from Patan, where metal-work is an ancient tradition. Yesterday we went to their workshop on the fringes of that town, and watched as they cast bronze bowls in a manner that hasn’t changed for centuries, except for a power-grinder and polisher to finish the process. We learned the difference between the brass machine-worked bowls, which are cheap but loose their timbre after a few months; the cast bronze bowls, which are nice but uniform and rather characterless; the hand-beaten bronze bowls, which are things of beauty; and the old, used beaten bronze bowls, called thadobhuti, which are heirlooms, and have the most fantastic songs. We have purchased only the last two types of bowls. For pictures and sizes see below. We also have one magnificent lost-wax-cast brass Buddha from the Tuladhar brothers. It is the only one we will have this year, Sakyamuni in the “Calling Earth to Witness” mudra.
And speaking of treasure, we have our best selection of Tibetan and Nepali art ever! The political situation in Nepal drove our friend Govinda to India. A collector for many years, Govinda took all of his goods to a warehouse south of Delhi. He has some absolutely amazing pieces – rice grinding boards 7 m long and a metre thick, carved from a single tree-trunk; huge ceremonial doors from Naga villages – but what drew us to him in the first place was his Tibetan doors. These doors are made in Tibet from original doors, but the painting is often more recent, say 15 to 25 years old, done on canvas which is glued to the door, often with plaster embelishments that create a raised-finish, metallic-looking detail. We have two doors: one has the Buddha Sakymuni, and one a Tibetan king.
Also from Govinda are some original tribal carvings that we only have a few pieces of. These come from Nepal, and are often quite whimsical – like the fanged mask with granny glasses, or the stack of cats. One of my favourites is a three-piece door frame, all elaborately and boldly carved. The pieces all come apart, and are great sculptural panels on their own, but we think it should be kept as an integral unit.
Here is the price list for the items on offer. Please note that G.S.T. and P.S.T. will be added, as well as any additional shipping costs.
SINGING BOWLS:
Hand-beaten bronze large (23 cm. diameter, 1.4 kg) retail $150. SALE PRICE $105.
Hand-beaten bronze medium (14cm, 500 gr) retail $55. SALE PRICE $38.50.
Old bronze thadobhati (18 cm diameter 800 gr) retail $110. SALE PRICE $77.
Brass Buddha (26 cm, 2.76 kg) retail $300. SALE PRICE $210.
TIBETAN DOORS approx. 60” X 36″ retail $900. SALE PRICE $630.
NEPALI FOLK CARVING:
Round-eyed mask retail $25. SALE PRICE $17.50.
Goat boxes retail $60. SALE PRICE $42.
