History of Jepara Indonesia - Art of Furniture Building

Jepara is a small town on the north coast of Central Java with one main industry, furniture building and wood carvings. It is about one and half hours by car from the provincial capital Semarang.

Jepara was an important port kingdom in the mid-sixteenth century. The city itself has had a very strong influence in world history for nearly 2,000 years. The colonial Dutch burned it to the ground twice in one year for breaking their trade monopoly. It was also the home of Kartini the Javanese aristocrat whose life and letters advanced educational opportunities for Indonesian women in the early twentieth century.

There is an old folk tale that tells of how Jepara became a city of artisans and carvers of wood. A long time ago a king hired a famous artist to paint a picture of his wife. The artist was as artists are very imaginative and created a nude painting of the queen. The king liked the painting a lot until he noticed a very obscure birthmark on the nude painting that the artist should never have seen. So as the tale goes the king was so mad that he tied the artist and all of his tools to a kite and cut it free. The artist and his tools flew high over the mountain and came to rest in what is now known as Jepara.

More close to factual accounts of the history, Jepara developed the craft of carving furniture from a series of steps long before it became what it is today as a center for furniture production.

The history of wood carvings in Jepara goes all the way back to the 7th century. It was mostly the women of Jepara that got the artisans skills recognized as an art form.

It was Queen Shima whom ruled the Kalingga Kingdom of Jepara in the 7th century whom would actualy set into motion the development of that art. She supported the carvings to be implemented into the home and ship building of her time. Her styles and traditions of wood carvings combined with Chinese, Indian, and Arabic influence throughout the centuries compiled a mixture of artistic styles. These crafts were handed down from father to son artisans until it met up with the western world around 1600.

Jepara is then led by another woman, Queen Kalinyamat. She set about to improve the styles used by the artisans and started trading commodities with the western world in the 16th century.

Though not mentioned much in the history books as an influence on furniture production the Dutch East Indies Company, English and the Portuguese brought with them their western style conveniences when they set up occupations for trading here over 400 years ago. It was the needs of western style conveniences these traders of sugar cane and other commodities brought with them that set the base standards for the modern day furniture building in Jepara.

In the 19th century, the development of Jepara Furniture Industry became famous in many countries all over the world after R.A Kartini, the daughter of Jepara Head Residence introduced the wood carving products from Jepara to the Queen Wilhelmina of Holland at her marriage ceremony as gifts from Indonesia.

Again in the 20th century when Soeharto was President of Indonesia, Jepara Furniture Home Industry got support from the President's Wife to get investors to expand their business. As a result, many foreign investors were very interested to expand their business to Jepara. It was this investor influence that brought alive the antique reproduction styles most pre-dominant here up until now.

We here at East Indies TradUR see ourselves as a key player for the next stage in furniture history of Jepara. Our classic and modern American styles combined with the ancient traditional carvings have already been recognized by many as works of art. To quote a recent client, "ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE! Beautiful works of art."