This is one of a range of musical instruments imported by the fairtrade company Siesta from Indonesia. It is made from a reused car tyre with flattened bottle tops (from Guinness, the Irish stout beer) attached on a metal bar with decorated wooden holders to keep it all together.

Siesta started in 1983 with objects from Mexico and Guatemala. They now operate on a more global scale and say this about their business:

After many years of trading we are proud of the fact that we have established good and long lasting relationships with our suppliers. In many cases we have become good friends with our suppliers – but there is much more to it than that. Most of our suppliers are small family businesses employing only a few people so we try and keep them in continuous work and we also help develop new products with them thus enabling their businesses to grow alongside ours.

In virtually every case, we pay our suppliers for orders in advance, thus preventing them from possibly having to borrow money to start the order. We agree prices with suppliers, rather than imposing prices. We do not allow the exploitation of children nor discrimination against gender. We try to ensure that working conditions are good by local standards and that raw materials are from renewable resources.

We have over the years helped local communities with numerous projects ranging from educational investment to building much needed toilets for families. However, like the majority of our suppliers we are a business and not a charity, and we hope to make a difference through mutually beneficial trade - accepting that the small amount of business we do is not going to radically change the world.