Dumbara rata kalala runner
Three weeks on a pit loom in Thalagune, in a pattern held only in the weaver's head.
$340
Kaluwara serving bowl
$260
Ceylon ebony, dense enough to blunt a chisel in an afternoon.
Materials & dimensions
- Salvaged Ceylon ebony (kaluwara)
- Food-safe oil finish
24 × 9 × 24 cm · 1.1 kg
Care
Wipe clean, never soak, and keep it out of the dishwasher — heat and standing water will split it. Re-oil twice a year with any food-safe oil. Serve dry food; it is a fruit and bread bowl, not a soup bowl.
Shipping & duties
Free standard shipping
Express $51.30
North America · 1.1 kg
Import duties and taxes are set by United States, not by us. They are not included above, and your carrier collects them on delivery.
The story
Kaluwara is Ceylon ebony, and it is a serious material. It is dense enough to sink in water, hard enough to take the edge off a chisel in a single afternoon, and heavy in a way that surprises everyone who picks this bowl up for the first time expecting wood to weigh what wood usually weighs.
Nimal works it slowly because there is no other option. The bowl is turned and then finished by hand, and the pale streaks running through the black are the boundary between heartwood and sapwood — the tree's own record of the years it took to lay that timber down. Uniform jet-black ebony is usually dyed. This is not.
The timber is salvaged, from old estate furniture and felled garden trees. Ceylon ebony is protected and slow-growing, and no reputable workshop in Ambalangoda is cutting live ones for a bowl.
Nimal Gunasekara
Ambalangoda, Southern Province · working since 1989
