The Art of Puppet Making

Delicate, laborious, repetitive, striking, brilliant and methodical. These artists leave little to chance. Every mark carefully planned. Compositions worked over for months, sometimes years. Since arriving in Solo I have been to a puppet making study near the kraton close to the market. There were two men working there, one which is pictured above. We only stayed a few minutes. Both artists painting different puppets. The one the artist is painting above is called a kayon, which usually represents the tree of life. Although upon visiting another puppet maker and dalangs I have seen this convention changed to suit different stories or even just in the spirit of creativity. There is a specific composition for the kayon of the Hindu tree of life which is used frequently and for many years in wayang. Such as the one above on the right. At the bottom is a type of pendopo or gateway into a palace with columns and a triangular tiled roof. This pendopo is flanked on either side by a giant. Above that are wings that represent the element of wind. Then there is a tiger and a bull. In the middle rising up to the top above the pendopo is the tree of life. Above that is a an eagle and surrounding are smaller monkeys and birds.

From my interviews with various dalangs, primarily Pak Purbo Asmoro and Pak Bambeng Suorno, I have obtained a wealth of information on how dalangs choose puppets, how they design , make or oversee the production of their own puppets and how important the puppets physical nature is to the performance and the dalang's interpretation of a character.
There are subtle qualities that to an untrained eye one would fail to notice about the aesthetic details not only in the quality of the carving, but the curves of the lines, the angles of the body, the proportion/balance of the puppet and its weight and feel that make a puppet good and desirable to a dalang. First of course is the ability for it to move fluidly this quality craftsmanship comes from those who are creating for performance purposes. Many puppets that one finds in the market are of lesser quality (in many other ways as well) and will not move properly. Other basic craftsmanship issues are in the quality of the leather. The best puppets are not too thick and flexible. This quality of leather is hard to find presently. Traditionally dalangs made their own puppets, starting from the curing process of the leather. These days many of the older dalangs still make their own puppets or in the least make some and oversee the creation of their others possibly only using one trusted puppetmaker that comes from a dalang family. Pak Purbo says that for him the best puppets come from the area of Klaten. He only buys and uses one puppet maker from that area. He creates his own puppets and showed me a kayon he has been working on for 2 years. They go back and forth with designs and the puppet maker will carve the puppet and before painting it let Pak Purbo live with it for a while and see how he feels about it. Pak Purbo also has a vast collection of antique puppets which he feels are of ideal design and many of his own designs will stem from the qualities of those puppets using them as a foundation for his own puppets. Pak Purbo is very passionate about his wayang. He points out all the subtle details that make a puppet look alive and expressive rather than static. His sense of aesthetic for wayang is highly refined as well as intuitive. He is connected to his puppets, his tools become an extension of himself.
Pak Bambeng is well known as an innovator of kayons. He has created many different ones for himself as well as other dalangs that express various concepts or themes and some to create special effects.