Gift baskets in Bali: the frame under the contents
Willow and rattan take weight and keep a handle upright. Thin stamped basketwork on a wire ring is cheap and holds under light contents, but a few kilos pull it into a rhombus and the handle begins to lean. The join where the handle meets the rim is the usual failure point, since on cheap frames it is wired to a single rod, and that rod comes away in somebody's hand along with the handle.
Lift it by the handle before it is filled.
A flat base a palm wide matters just as much, because a narrow conical one tips every time it is put down. Baskets fail in the recipient's hands rather than on a shelf, which is why two frames of the same size and price can behave completely differently at the door.
Mixed contents bring a timing problem. Cut flowers give a week, fruit gives three or four days in a warm room, and tea, biscuits and candles do not expire at all. Wet foam beside fruit shortens the fruit further, so a sheet of film or a low divider goes between them. Anything perishable is placed where it can be lifted out without the arrangement collapsing behind it, and half emptied the basket should still look deliberate. Weight follows the same common sense that nobody applies: heavy items low and near the centre, light ones at the edges and the top, since a jar of honey against the rim turns the whole thing into a pendulum on the stairs.
"We build a basket for the moment half of it is gone. That is the state it spends most of its life in."
— JFLOO florist
Addresses where the kitchen belongs to somebody else
Gift baskets in Bali go mostly to those. A villa taken for a fortnight, a room at a Nusa Dua hotel, a dinner in Ubud where the table is already laid: none of them will produce a vase at short notice. Delivery in Seminyak, Canggu and Sanur takes 90 to 150 minutes, Uluwatu, Tabanan and remote villas run to 3 or 4 hours, and we work from 9 AM to 10 PM.
The wet season runs from November to March, the drier months from April to October. Above 30 °C, and in the humidity that comes with it, we use firm wrapping and a cooling element, and any basket with fruit in it is assembled on the day it goes out rather than the evening before. An open weave protects nothing on its own, so through the rain it travels closed and is opened at the address.
The flower part comes from what reaches the island, cut down to the height of the rim. Imported roses at 60 to 90 cm and Ecuadorian roses up to 120 cm supply the large heads, macrophylla hydrangea fills volume with a single stem, ranunculus and lisianthus work the middle, orchids hold their shape longest, and tropical foliage covers the foam along the edge.
A deep-sided basket needs one more decision at the bench. Flowers sitting on foam laid flat on the base disappear into the weave, so the block goes up on a riser and the line of the heads clears the rim. Otherwise the piece reads well from directly above and looks like nothing at all from a chair beside it.
Orders start from 650000 IDR, with payment through QRIS, GoPay, OVO or DANA, or in cash to the courier.
Tell us what the recipient can actually carry. A basket going up an outside stair to a first-floor villa is built lower and denser than one landing on a table three metres from the gate, and that decision is made before anything at all is packed into it.
