When R and I were in Bali we saw some carved coconut shell lights in the markets, most of the designs were fairly simple. But when we went on a sightseeing trip to a temple outside of Ubud, we found this old man who had been carving coconut shells for his whole life. His designs (in the photo above) are quite elaborate and magical. We zeroed in on one that was really cool with monkeys carved in it, he said we picked his favorite work and wouldn't sell it, but showed us another that was similar. ...
The design also has monkeys, if you look hard you can see their bodies and arms and tails. It sits on another carved shell base.
Sometimes these lights are lit by candle, but we put a electric bulb in ours when we got back to Malaysia. It looks pretty cool at night as our master bedroom is dark brown so the light makes the room very moody. I tried to search more on Indonesian coconut shell carving, not much out there on the web.
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