Review 19 1 2010 March

VO LU M E 1 9 N O.
1 M a r c h 2 0 1 0
the journal of
the asian arts society
of australia
TAASA Review
contents
Volume 19 No.1 March 2010
Ed itor ial
Josefa Green
TAA S A R E VIE W
Serving the Resistance: Lacquer Painting in Vietnam during the First Indochina War
Phoebe Scott
THE ASIAN ARTS SOCIETY OF AUSTRALIA INC.

Abn 64093697537 Vol. 19 No. 1, March 2010
ISSN 1037.6674
Registered by Australia Post. Publication No. NBQ 4134
e di torI A L email: editorial@taasa.org.au

7 An afternoon in Ahmedabad: In conversation with embroidery master Asif Shaikh
Carole Douglas
When the s un i s i n l i n e wi t h t he wat er b ot t l e
Ann Proctor
General editor, Josefa Green

p ub l i c at i on s c om m i t t ee
12 An Austr alasian Cer amics M u se u m in F u p ing, C hi n a
Janet Mansfield
Min-Jung Kim
16 The Nat Yuen Collection of Chinese Antiquities at the University of Queensland
Gordon Craig
p ri n t i n g
John Fisher Printing
Published by The Asian Arts Society of Australia Inc.

PO Box 996 Potts Point NSW 2011
www.taasa.org.au
Enquiries: admin@taasa.org.au
18 Moving the pas t to th e p r ese nt: a Sie m Reap-A ng kor K h m e r resi de n c e
desi g n / l ayout
Ingo Voss, VossDesign
14 Ar tist P r ofile : Wo n- Se o k K ims Au s tr al ian B u nch e on g Wa re
Josefa Green (convenor) Tina Burge

Melanie Eastburn Sandra Forbes Ann MacArthur
Jim Masselos Ann Proctor Susan Scollay
Sabrina Snow Christina Sumner
TAASA Review is published quarterly and is distributed to members

of The Asian Arts Society of Australia Inc. TAASA Review welcomes
Darryl Collins
submissions of articles, notes and reviews on Asian visual and
21 In the P ublic D o main: J apanese T r e as u r es at th e N at i on a l L i b ra ry of Aus t ra l i a
Anya Dettman with Mayumi Shinozaki
22
P r ec ious P layth ings in D u bl in: Snu ff bottl es in t h e C h est e r Beat t y L i b ra ry
Christine Inglis
performing arts. All articles are refereed. Additional copies and

subscription to TAASA Review are available on request.
No opinion or point of view is to be construed as the opinion of
The Asian Arts Society of Australia Inc., its staff, servants or agents.
No claim for loss or damage will be acknowledged by TAASA
Review as a result of material published within its pages or
in other material published by it. We reserve the right to alter
24 Nation al Her itage o r I nte r natio nal C o mmo d ity ? T h e S i t uat i on i n C h i n a
or omit any article or advertisements submitted and require
or liabilities that may arise from material published.
Philip Courtenay
indemnity from the advertisers and contributors against damages
26 T r aveller s Tal e : A Wes t T imo r We d d ing
All reasonable efforts have been made to trace copyright holders.
Ross Langlands
TAA S A M E MB E R S HIP RAT E S
27
P r ofile : Jim M asse lo s
Pamela Gutman
28 Rec ent TAASA Activities

28 TAAS A Member s D iar y
29
W hat s On: Mar ch M ay 2 0 1 0
Compiled by Tina Burge
TAKASHIMA OIKO NO HANASHI [THE TALE OF TAKASHIMA OIKO] BY TAISO YOSHITOSHI, 1889.
JAPANESE WOODCUT COLOUR PRINT ON 2 PAGES OF HOSHO PAPER, 35.5 x 24.0 CM. COLLECTION OF
THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF AUSTRALIA.
In this folk tale, a travelling wrestler on his way to a tournament seizes the hand of
a passing peasant woman, Takashima Oiko, a legendary Japanese female Hercules, not
realising she is as strong as she is beautiful. To his surprise and horror he is unable to free
himself from her grip, whereas she easily drags him along while blithely continuing to carry
her bucket with the other hand. The kind-hearted Oiko then offers to become his trainer.
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TAA S A c o m m i t t ee
E DITORIAL
Judith Ruther for d Pr esident
Josefa Green, Editor
Collector and specialist in Chinese textiles

G i ll G r een Vice Pr esident
Art historian specialising in Cambodian culture

A NN GUILD TREASU RER
Former Director of the Embroiders Guild (UK)

KATE JOHNSTON SECR ETARY
Intellectual property lawyer with

an interest in Asian textiles
Hwe i-fe n c heah
Lecturer, Art History, Australian National University,

with an interest in needlework
JOCE LYN CH EY
Visiting Professor, Department of Chinese Studies,

University of Sydney; former diplomat
Matt Cox
Study Room Co-ordinator, Art Gallery of New South

Wales, with a particular interest in Islamic Art of
Southeast Asia
Phi li p Cour tenay
Former Professor and Rector of the Cairns Campus,

James Cook University, with a special interest in
Southeast Asian ceramics
Sandr a For bes
Editorial consultant with long-standing interest

in South and Southeast Asian art
Jo sefa Gr ee n
General editor of TAASA Review. Collector of Chinese

ceramics, with long-standing interest in East Asian
art as student and traveller
The TAASA Review starts the new year with

a general issue that once again demonstrates
the range of talent and expertise in the Asian
art field to be found in Australia and the
richness of our collections.
Two of the feature articles in this issue
represent original research on Southeast Asian
topics. Phoebe Scott shares the results of her
PhD research work on Vietnamese art from
the 1920s to the 1950s. She discusses the way
in which lacquer painting, a traditional art
medium in Vietnam, was used as a vehicle for
resistance during the first Indochina war from
1946 to 1954. Ann Proctor became intrigued
by the handsome earthenware water pots
which she has encountered on her many
trips to Laos. Her intrepid detective work
has progressed our knowledge about these
beautiful utilitarian objects, as very little
is known to date about their manufacture,
distribution and use.
GE RALDINE HARDMAN
Collector of Chinese furniture and Burmese lacquerware

ANN PROCTOR
Lecturer in Asian Art, Sydney University

and the National Art School, Sydney
ANN ROBERT S
Art consultant specialising in Chinese

ceramics and works of art
SABRINA S NO W
Has a long association with the Art Gallery of New

South Wales and a particular interest in the arts of China
CHRISTINA S UMNER
Principal Curator, Design and Society,

Powerhouse Museum, Sydney
SPE CIALIS T ADVISOR ON N E A SIA
Min-Jung Kim
Ho n. Aud itor
Rosenfeld Kant and Co

s t a t e r ep r ese n t a t i v es
Australian Capital Territory
Ro b yn Maxwell
Visiting Fellow in Art History, ANU;

Senior Curator of Asian Art, National Gallery of Australia
Northern Territory
We continue to feature Australian collections

of Asian art with an article by Gordon Craig on
the Nat Yuen collection of Chinese antiquities
housed in the Art Museum of the University
of Queensland. Representing a generous
donation by Dr Natalis Yuen, a Hong Kong
resident and alumnus from the University
of Queensland, the collection contains some
100 objects that showcase the special features
of each major period of Chinese ceramic
production from the Neolithic period to the
end of the Qing dynasty. Curators Anya
Dettman and Mayumi Shinozaki bring the
rich collection of 19th and early 20th century
Ukiyo-e (woodblock) prints in the National
Library of Australia to our attention in our
regular feature In the Public Domain. A
striking example of one of these prints, by the
artist Yoshitoshi, has been used as the cover
for this issue.
Joanna Barrkman
Curator of Southeast Asian Art and Material Culture,

Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory
Queensland
Su hanya Raffel
Head of Asian and Pacific Art, Queensland Art Gallery

South Australia
Ja m es Be nn ett
Curator of Asian Art, Art Gallery of South Australia

Victoria
The work of Korean Australian ceramic artist

Won-Seok Kim is featured in this issues Artist
Profile. Powerhouse curator of Asian Art &
Design, Min-Jung Kim provides an insight
into the way in which the artist integrates
traditional Korean ceramic techniques with
Australian materials to produce his distinctive
Australian Buncheong ware.
Caro l Cain s
Curator Asian Art, National Gallery of Victoria International

TASMANIA
Kat e Br ittlebank
Lecturer in Asian History, School of History and Classics,

University of Tasmania
In contrast, Janet Mansfield describes how,

with significant input from herself, the work
of more than 20 Australian and New Zealand
ceramists is permanently represented in an
Australasian Museum in the town of Fuping

in Chinas Shanxi Province. This museum,
along with about 14 other national museums,
is the brainchild of retired businessman, Dr
Ichi Hsu. He convinced the owners of a
major brick and tile factory in Fuping to
create a major ceramics centre which would
provide a venue for ceramists from all over
the world to stay, make work and leave their
pieces behind in purpose built museums.
This exciting development now seems to
have developed a life of its own, with more
national museums about to open on the
site together with a graduate school for
ceramic art, hotels and apartment blocks and
a 5 year expansion plan, Chinese style, which
involves establishing 5 international ceramic
art galleries including one in Melbourne.
Asian art enthusiasts are generally keen
travellers, seeking out exhibitions, collections
and a deeper engagement with the diverse
cultures of Asia wherever and whenever
possible. This March issue offers a number of
articles that aim to share these experiences.
Carole Douglas, textile expert and designer,
vividly describes her visit to the workshop
of master embroiderer Asif Shaikh in
Ahmedabad, India. Christine Inglis shares
her passion for Chinese snuff bottles and
her experience as a participant at the recent
41st annual convention of the International
Chinese Snuff Bottle Society in Dublin,
which focused on an exhibition of exquisite
snuff bottles from the Chester Beatty
Library collection. Ross Langlands describes
the wedding of friends in West Timor, a
fascinating mixture of traditional custom and
Paris chic. And Darryl Collins, an Australian
now living in Cambodia, tells the truly
inspiring story of how he saved a traditional
wooden Cambodian house from demolition
by having it transported piece by piece over
a 300 km distance, to be reconstructed as his
new home in Seam Reap.
Along with a thoughtful summary of
the current situation relating to the
prevention of illicit looting of antiquities in
China by Philip Courtenay, and a profile
of Jim Masselos by Pamela Gutman,
celebrating his profound contribution to
the study of India, its art and culture, I hope
that you will enjoy this first TAASA Review
for 2010.
S E RVING TH E R E S I S TANC E : LACQU E R P AINTING IN VI E TNAM DURING

TH E F IR S T INDOCHINA W AR 1 9 4 6 - 5 4
Phoebe Scott
Young Girls and the Sea (ThiEu nU v biEn), 1940, NguyEn VAn TY (1917-1992),
lacquer, 94 x 96cm, Vietnam Fine Arts Museum collection, Hanoi
he First Indochina War (1946 -1954) was

a complex conflict. On one level, it was
an anti-colonial and nationalist struggle. In
August of 1945, Ho Chi Minh had declared
Vietnams independence from French control.
By November 1946, the newly-established
Democratic Republic of Vietnam was at war,
as France attempted to re-take her former
colony. The Communist-backed Viet Minh led
the Resistance against France, with a broad
base of pro-independence supporters. In the
1950s, the conflict became more implicated in
cold-war politics internationally (Lawrence
and Logevall 2007), while inside the Viet
Minh-controlled areas, there was increasing
emphasis on the class-based social revolution
(Ninh 2002: 83-117).
For the many Vietnamese artists who supported
the Viet Minh, the war had a profound effect
on their art practice. Working directly in the
service of the Resistance, they were acutely
influenced by political changes. Many of these
artists had been trained in the cole des Beaux
Arts de lIndochine (EBAI) the art school
founded by the French colonial government
in Hanoi in 1925 and had to re-assess the
heritage of their education in a highly polarised
environment. The debate over the future of
lacquer painting, one of the most successful
genres of art to emerge from the EBAI, reveals
the complex transition that artists faced in
this period, and the implications of the wider
tensions within the war itself.
The use of lacquer as a means of decorating
and preserving both utilitarian and sacred
objects has a long history in Vietnam. The raw
lacquer substance is harvested from the sap of
the Rhus succedanea tree, indigenous to North
Vietnam. At the EBAI, the search for a local
form of modern art led to experiments with
using lacquer as a painting medium. Artists at
the EBAI developed a process called son mi
or rubbed paint: multiple layers of lacquer
were built up on a flat support, then rubbed
back to reveal sections of the under layers,
then polished. The process was arduous, with
each work requiring months of preparation
because of the sensitivities of the medium.
Despite this, Vietnamese artists in the 1930s
and 1940s produced works of compositional
complexity and visual richness, exploiting
the translucent depth of the layers of lacquer.
Landscapes and images of women were
common themes. In Nguyen Van Tys Young
Girls and the Sea of 1940, the artist uses a

figural arrangement that recalls Botticelli,
but through the contrast of the black lacquer
and the meticulously-inlaid fragments of
eggshell, creates a strong sense of rhythm
and pattern. The colonial periods master of
lacquer painting was the artist Nguyen Gia
Tr, who exploited the mediums potential
for lyricism in his images of women, blurring
figure and ground in a manner that tended
toward abstraction.
In 1946, a number of the leading artists
associated with the EBAI moved from Hanoi to
rural base areas (called Interzones) and began
to create work in support of the Resistance.
These artists were called upon to produce
timely art: generally propaganda work
suitable for mass reproduction. There was
some doubt about the usefulness of lacquer
painting at this time. How could lacquer a
medium that was fickle, time-consuming and
associated with the romanticism of the colonial
period be used to serve the Resistance?
Nonetheless, the medium received significant
support from one of the most important

artists of the colonial period: T Ngoc Vn.
Vn graduated from the EBAI in 1931, and
was of the few Vietnamese artists to return to
the School as a teacher. He was a successful
oil painter, and frequently published writing
on the visual arts. Following the Revolution,
Vn gave his support to the Viet Minh. In
1948, he established a studio in the Viet
Minh-controlled province of Ph Tho, where
he created artworks with patriotic themes. As
Ph Tho was the foremost lacquer-producing
region in Vietnam, Vn decided to experiment
with the local material (Quang 2005:181).
One of his lacquer paintings created at this
time is Escaping from the Invader in the Jungle.
This small, three-panel work was particularly
innovative because Vn managed to introduce
a green pigment into the lacquer (Quang
2005:181). Because of lacquers sensitivity as
a medium, the traditional palette had been
limited to red, black, a kind of brown known
as cockroach wing, silver and gold from
inlaid metal, and white created by inlaid
T AA S A R E V I E W V O L U M E 1 9 N O . 1
Escaping from the Invader in the Jungle (ChAy giAc trong rUng) (incomplete work) 1948, T NgOc Vn (1906-1954),
lacquer, 90x90cm, Vietnam Fine Arts Museum collection, Hanoi
eggshell. Earlier attempts to produce cool

tones had been generally unsuccessful, as the
lacquer reacted to the pigment. Despite this
technical innovation, Escaping from the Invader
still owes much to colonial-period lacquer
painting. Although the title makes reference
to the wartime conditions, the image of the
women in their intricately-patterned o di
dresses, melting into the backdrop of jungle
foliage, does not mark a strong change of
direction in style or even subject matter. The
work is thought to be incomplete, which may
account for the brevity of some of its forms
(Quang 2005:181 and note in T 2004:108).
Vn was also a strong advocate of lacquer
painting in his writings during this period. In
1948, he presented his ideas about lacquer at
the Second National Cultural Conference, an
important meeting of intellectuals, artists and
Communist Party leaders in the Resistance
Zone of Northern Vietnam (published as
T 1948:18-22). Vns thesis on lacquer was
ambitious. He believed that Vietnamese artists
were the first artists worldwide to use lacquer
as an expressive, rather than decorative,
medium. He argued that, while Western
oil painting had been reinvigorated at the
end of the 19th century through such Asian
stylistic influences as Japanese woodblock
prints, it was once again at an impasse,
with the developments of Modernist painters
passing into facile imitation. Oil painting
was exhausted, and painters worldwide
were calling for a new medium. Vn thought
that lacquer offered a solution: its innate
characteristics, such as luminosity and depth
of colour, had a special capacity to express the
internal life of the artist (T 1948:20-21).
Vns argument was prescient in that he
anticipated the focus on the innate qualities
of painting media that would drive future
modern art movements, such as Abstract
Expressionism. However, in North Vietnam
at the time, Marxist theories of culture were
gaining importance. Another writer rebuked
Vn, arguing that Western painting was
not moribund because of its medium, but
because its artists were working in a decaying
Capitalist society (Nguyen 1949:75). More
importantly, at the Second National Cultural
Conference of 1948, the Secretary General of
the Communist Party, Truong Chinh, had
presented his work Marxism and Vietnamese
Culture: the most important document in the
Vietnam Communist Partys cultural policy
(Ninh 2002:16, 39-45). It was a guideline for
creation in all branches of the arts. Artists were
to pursue Socialist Realism and develop their
work from close contact with and observation
of the people. All cultural products had to
be national, scientific and popular (Truong
1977). It was no longer possible for artists to

base their work around the expression of their
subjective experience.
The issue of lacquer was discussed again at
the Conference Debates held in the Resistance
Zone in 1949. These Debates discussed how
to reconcile appropriate form and content
across all different branches of the arts (Ninh
2002:88-93). In the visual arts, the Debates
compared the potential of oil painting and
lacquer, using examples from the EBAItrained artists Nguyen o Cung and Nguyen
Tu Nghim respectively. Nghim had worked
alongside T Ngoc Vn in his studio at Ph
Tho, and also made use of the new green tone.
In general, his lacquer works from this time
were genre scenes of the activities of soldiers
in the Resistance Zone, showing an interest in
precise observation and picturesque detail.
The published transcript of the Debates shows
that the works of both Cung and Nghim
were analysed publicly in detail, and were
criticised (Tranh luan ve Hoa 1949:57-70).
Among other issues, Cung was considered
to be too intellectual in his compositions,
and Nghim too emotionally remote from
his subject. Nghims work also had some
technical problems, as he was new to lacquer.
The debate over Nghims work quickly
turned to the future potential of lacquer.
Nguyen o Cung spoke out against it, arguing
that it was an imprecise, elitist medium suited

to the illusions of the colonial period, not the
clarity of the new, Revolutionary society.
Likewise, Van Cao (the composer of Vietnams
National Anthem) thought that lacquer could
only express fantastical (or immoral) subjects.
Lacquer did have some defenders, including
those who thought that experimenting with
the colours that could be produced in lacquer
would allow the medium to become suitable
for Realist works. The debate ended with a
lukewarm conclusion, deferring research in
lacquer until a future date and reminding
artists to focus on the urgent task of producing
propaganda images.
Despite this lacklustre support, lacquer
painting did continue to be produced during
the war. One successful work was made
by Nguyen Sy Ngoc, also a graduate of
the EBAI, who was based in the north of
Central Vietnam. Communication between
the wartime Interzones was limited: as a
result, different areas could develop stylistic
variations (Ninh 2002:86-7). Sy Ngocs work
Friendship between the Army and the People
shows an elderly woman giving a drink to
a soldier who is on his way to the Front.
The artist eliminated background detail to
focus the connection between the two central
figures, which are rendered with a robust
solidity reminiscent of traditional Vietnamese
folk prints. Red and gold lacquer is used to
Friendship between the Army and the People (Tnh qun dn), NguyEn SY NgOc (1919-1990), lacquer, 80x60cm,
re-named copy by the artist of his lost 1949 work The Bowl (Ci Bt), Vietnam Fine Arts Museum collection, Hanoi
heroic physiques of Soviet Socialist Realism.

For example, Nguyen uc Nngs 1958
work Dawn over the Farm shows an idealised,
muscular figure and a dramatic use of light,
quite different to the modest and picturesque
aesthetic used in wartime lacquer painting.
The discussion of lacquer painting during
the First Indochina War shows that it was
not easy for artists to dissociate the medium
from its colonial-period heritage. Yet despite
the pressures of material shortages and the
shifting ideological environment, artists did
manage to produce innovative work, and
in their public advocacy of the medium,
they engaged in a serious and thoughtful
assessment of the past.
Phoebe Scott is a PhD candidate at the University
of Sydney, where she is researching Vietnamese
art from 1925 to 1954. She also holds a Masters
degree in Asian Art from the School of Oriental and
African Studies in London.
REFERENCES
Tranh Luan ve Hoa (Debate on Painting), Van Nghe, so Tranh
Luan (Special Debate Issue) (1949), 57-70.
Bi Nhu Huong, Pham Trung, and Nguyen Van Chien, 2005. My
thuat Viet nam Hien dai (Modern Vietnamese Art), Vien My Thut
(Institute of Fine Arts), Hanoi.
Kim Ngoc Bao Ninh, 2002. A World Transformed: The Politics of
Culture in Revolutionary Vietnam 1945-1965, University of Michigan
Press, Ann Arbor.
Lawrence, Mark Atwood, and Logevall, Fredrik, eds., 2007. The
First Vietnam War: Colonial Conflict and Cold War Crisis, Harvard
University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Nguyen nh Phc, Nhung Chat dng de Ve (Painting Materials),
Van Nghe, 13 (1949), 74-80.
Quang Viet, 2005. Hoi hoa Son mi Viet nam (Vietnamese Lacquer
Painting), Nh Xuat Ban My Thuat (Fine Arts Publishing House),
Hanoi.
T Ngoc Thanh (ed.), 2004. Nho T Ngoc Vn (Remembering T
Ngoc Vn), Nh Xuat Ban My Thuat (Fine Arts Publishing House),
Hanoi.
create warmth in the image and heightens the

emotional resonance of the moment.
The 1950s brought tighter ideological control
into the Viet Minh zones. Maoist techniques
of ideological rectification, imported from
China, required many intellectuals and artists
to make public self-criticisms (Ninh 2002:1117). In 1953, T Ngoc Vn wrote Confidences
of a Poisoned Person, where he publicly
denounced not only his work from the
colonial period, but works made after 1945
(T 1953). He described how he was unable to
give up his attachment to the bourgeois and
debauched female characters of his colonial
art, and rather than relinquishing them, he
inserted them into Resistance artworks such
as Escaping from the Invader. Confessions like
Vns indicate that support for the Viet Minh
and a generally pro-independence outlook
were no longer sufficient guarantees for

producing ideologically correct art. Despite
the severity of his self-criticism, T Ngoc Vn
had actually produced a large volume of new
work during the war, in the form of sketches
of life in the army and in the rural villages.
One of these he developed into a lacquer
work in 1953, an anecdotal scene of soldiers
and their porters taking a rest on the road to
the Front.
T Ngoc Vn, 1948. Son mai (Lacquer), Van Nghe, 5, 18-22.

T Ngoc Vn, 1953. Tm Su mot Nguoi bi au doc (Confessions
of a Poisoned Person), Van Nghe, 41, original page numbers
unknown.
Truong Chinh, 1977. Marxism and Vietnamese Culture (1948), in
Selected Writings, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Hanoi.
Given the doubts over lacquer expressed in

this period, it is ironic that in the following
decade lacquer painting would experience
a technical flowering. After the war, when
material conditions had improved, artists
produced large-scale history paintings
in lacquer, memorialising the Resistance.
Many of these works were influenced by
the dynamic, sweeping compositions and
AN A F T E RNOON IN AHM E DABAD : IN CONV E R S ATION

W ITH E MBROID E RY MA S T E R A S I F S HAIKH
Carole Douglas
Asif gives guidance to one of his karigars (artisans).

Photo Carole Douglas 2010
embroiderer and designer Asif Shaikh

M aster
sits in contemplative mood in his newly
renovated studio perched high over the Indian
city of Ahmedabad. The late afternoon sun
streams through his windows and illuminates
an array of elegantly designed and exquisitely
embroidered items: a colour-coordinated range
of clothing hangs artfully on a slim rack; several
glass shelves hold carefully folded sarees and
stoles, while others offer a selection of the finest
Indian hand-woven fabrics. The sense of calm
reflects the man himself and belies the chaos
of the streets below, where ancient mosques,
shrines and temples, crowded chowks,
roadside stalls, shanty towns, grand old havelis,
tiny offices and godowns rub shoulders
with contemporary housing developments,
cavernous shopping malls, glass office blocks
and high-tech industries. Yet in spite of the citys
rapid modernisation and changing consumer
habits, one can still find inspired individuals
such as Asif, who foster traditional textile arts
in the 21st century without losing sight of the
standards of excellence for which Gujarat was
once world-renowned.
Conversations with Asif invariably come around
to the issue of standards and he is forthright in his
opinion: You can already see the drop in quality
- artisans cannot compete with machine-made
goods. In order to survive they lower costs and
have to lower standards and if we do not insist
on high standards then the excellence reached in
the past will simply disappear altogether.
He is of course referring to the years of Mughal

rule under which Gujarat became a centre of
the Indian textile trade and the deft fingers
of its artisans created exquisitely decorated
silks and satins for the courts of their rulers
and later for the world. The royal ladies of
the state of Kutch in Gujarat were equally
fascinated by Persian motifs such as peacocks
and flowers and the aari style of embroidery
with which they were executed. In fact the
popular Kutchi work Asif now produces is
inspired by this period using the same fine
chain stitch technique that is the hallmark
of aari. A dedicated researcher of motifs and
styles, Asif is single-minded in his quest
for excellence. It takes an uncompromising
taskmaster to produce textiles equal to those
of former times and under his stewardship
a team of highly skilled karigars (artisans)
creates items destined for an elite and equally
uncompromising clientele.
He brings out several boxes of embroidery
samples and places the contents on the table
with such delight that one can almost see the
young boy who, after his first encounter with
needle and thread during a primary school
sewing class, began a journey that is still
unfolding. I knew from the first stitch that
embroidery was my destiny, he reflects. After
that time I began teaching myself everything
I could. He visited museums and dealers to
study styles, he observed artisans at work in
order to understand technique and he collected
examples and copied them meticulously until

he perfected each one. Because I have never
been taught mechanically I see embroidery
from a different perspective. It is an art that
exists within me and I have made it my lifes
work to bring it forth and explore it. Later
when I watched him carefully demonstrating
the perfect stitch to one of his karigars, I found
it hard to believe that the master himself is
entirely self-taught.
Today, Asifs studio specialises in the
techniques of aari and zardozi embroidery,
created on special wooden frames called
karchob, which are mounted horizontally on
the floor. The silk fabric is stretched taut
across the karchob and laced evenly in place
- tension is critical. The advantages of using
this frame are many. The karchob extends the
art of embroidery well beyond other ways
of working; it allows many embroiderers to
work simultaneously on one piece; they can
work on a large scale and produce volume
for commercial production and the frame
offers support to arms and hands during
long hours of stitching. Besides, when the
cloth is perfectly stretched the quality of the
stitch is consistent and gives the perfect finish
required by aari.
Aari embroidery originated with the Mochi
(cobbler) community at the time of Mughal
rule and still rests predominantly with the
same community. It is the domain of Muslim
men. The name is derived from the hooked
Karigars (artisans) working on Kutchi style 6 metRE satin silk saree in Asifs studio. Photo Carole Douglas 2009
TAASA members, Helen Perry (l) and Sally Powell (r), Sydney, enjoy the texture, colour and finesse
of a Kutchi style silk georgette saree in Asifs showroom. Photo Carole Douglas 2010
silk thread. His artisans are preparing to

finish their day. On one frame a group of
nine artisans is sitting cross legged on the
floor waiting for Asif to check the work a full length saree of turquoise blue satin
embellished with brilliant pink and red
Kutchi work. One artisan is stitching a layer
of fine metal foil (badla) in between rows of
traditional aari. It is Asifs latest innovation,
designed to add fashionable sparkle without
the weight of mirror discs traditionally used.
On another frame two artisans are putting the
finishing touches to another length of fabric
while his assistant, Zakir, is stencilling new
designs onto cloth.
needle - aar - an adaptation of the cobblers

awl (similar to the European tambour hook)
used to create the stitches. The design is
first stencilled onto the base cloth; the aar is
deftly passed through the stretched fabric; the
thread is held below the surface to be picked
up and pulled back as a small loop; the tip of
the aar is then inserted through this loop and
the process repeated to create a continuous
chain stitch that can follow the most delicate
and fluid of lines and with subtle gradations

of colour. The finer the awl and the thread,
the finer is the result.
Zardozi on the other hand is worked with
a needle using metallic threads of different
weights and thickness to create various
stitches including satin, stem, chain and
couching. Asif explains why the work is best
carried out on the karchob. We can set the
metal elements in place on the stretched fabric
surface ready to be picked up by the needle.
Only the best quality gold and silver threads
are used in his studio to recreate the jewel-like
splendour of imperial times.
Our conversation is interrupted by the arrival
of a young woman who has come to discuss
her wedding saree. Asif unfurls a length of
rich deep red silk crepe with the beginnings
of an elaborately worked golden zardozi style
border. They discuss the work intently and
take a long time to decide on the jaal the
individual motifs that will be repeated over
the entire surface of this six-metre length.
She brings her gold jewellery for inspiration.
No detail will be spared in the planning of
this forthcoming marriage. After she departs
Asif confides that she is a daughter of one of
the Gharana families - those of old wealth
and position who appreciate quality and can
afford to buy. He has no time for those who
request discounts. I tell them that discounted
prices mean discounted work. They soon get
the message.
In the background the studio hums with
concentrated effort as highly skilled artisans
sit cross-legged at their karchob and stitch
Asifs designs into fine satin and silk fabrics.
As we move into the large, light room I am
reminded of scenes from Beatrix Potters
classic The Tailor of Gloucester, as small hands
deftly and swiftly stitch with brilliant twisted
The windows are open and a ceiling fan

circulates fresh air - during the heat of the
middle part of the day an air conditioner is
used. Asif is scrupulous about the welfare of
his artisans; he knows their value and treats
them with respect; they work a nine-hour
day, take paid annual holidays, receive a
10% salary increase each year and are fully
insured. In turn, Asif is treated with respect
and loyalty and when he requires more
workers for important orders there is a large
number of artisans eager to join the team.
Asif carefully looks over the days work.
Fabric is rolled around an arm of the karchob;
the following days work is discussed at some
length and recently finished garments are
inspected before delivery. As we leave the
studio, Asif points out his latest endeavour
hanging in the foyer. An artist of considerable
talent, he is experimenting with embroidery
as a form of painting in which the needle
replaces the brush. This new work depicts
a tree without leaves being strangled by a
smaller plant - a money tree. As he explains,
The bare tree represents the struggle of
artisans - people can strangle art with mean
mindedness - they can kill with bargaining.
We descend nine floors in the creaking lift
and enter the haze of evening streets. A camel
cart vies for space in peak hour traffic, a small
girl begs persistently for money, crowded
auto rickshaws move people across busy
intersections and I am immediately thrust
back into the cacophony of Ahmedabad.
Another perfect day ends in this city of
contrasts and in the affirmation of a young
boys dream.
Carole Douglas is an educator, designer and
environmental advocate who specialises in textiles
and their production. She leads regular tours to India
and since 2003 has worked as a design facilitator for
the Victoria and Albert Museum shop in London.
W H E N TH E S UN I S IN LIN E W ITH TH E W AT E R BOTTL E

Ann Proctor
Water bottle, located in Laos, earthenware, h .29.5 cm, private collection. Photo: Ann Proctor
isiting Vientiane, the then rather sleepy

capital of Laos, in the 1990s, I was attracted
by a collection of earthenware bottles on
display in the foyer of the guesthouse where I
was staying. Their elegant shape, hand-made
individuality and varying patterns on the
surface made them aesthetically pleasing.
At the same time, their functionality, being
porous and thereby having the capacity to
cool the water they contained, added to their
attraction. Since that first encounter with this
particular type of ceramic ware, I have seen
many examples, asked many questions, and
read what literature I could lay my hands
on but there still remain many unanswered
questions concerning their manufacture,
disbursement and use.
Laos is well known for its spectacular textile
traditions. In a recent conversation, Madame
Lani, the owner of the guest house where I
stayed in the 1990s, stated that she had bought
the bottles on display from people who came
to sell her textiles in the 1980s, when foreign
tourism was becoming increasing popular.
She recalled that she recognised their cultural
significance and therefore kept them as part
of a small collection of antiques pertaining to
Lao culture.
The National Museum in Laos has a number
of examples of these kinds of water bottles,
one of which is extremely large, though badly
damaged. Similar water bottles are found in
other Southeast Asian Museums in Burma,
Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia. There is also
a fine example in the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery
in Washington D.C., currently on display
in the exhibition Taking Shape: Ceramics
in Southeast Asia. (http:/SEAsianCeramics.
asia.si.edu) Nevertheless, while research and
knowledge of textile traditions throughout
Southeast Asia is extensive, the field of
earthenware ceramics, so fundamental to the
everyday life of these peoples, remains a
much neglected field, particularly in Laos.
Most of the bottles examined since my
interest was piqued are between 25-30 cm
in height. They are made from fine clay and
weigh about one kilogram when empty. The
colours are either red or greyish black in
colour, depending on the nature of the firing:
a red colour indicating an oxygen rich firing
and black resulting from limited oxygen
during the firing process. The bodies are
decorated with incised, rouletted or applied
decoration in a variety of patterns, which not

only enhance the appearance of the bottles
but have functional aspects as well. Working
the clay in this manner increases the strength
of the walls of the pot, while at the same time
creating a textured surface that decreases the
possibility of slippage when drinking from
or handling a wet or damp pot. Some of the
bottles have flat bases, while some are footed
and the foot is frequently pierced with one or
two holes.
The repertoire of shapes and decoration
would seem to point to particular types being
made by specific communities for a range of
functions. For instance, those still being made
in the area around Chiang Mai in Thailand

tend to have a globular top and a rounded
belly with incised decoration that resembles
a basket. Another distinct and more widely
found group of bottles, with a large belly and
a long straight narrow spout, would appear to
be used for alcohol, whereas more elaborate
shapes, providing a larger surface area for
evaporation, appear to have been used as
bottles for the personal consumption of water.
These latter bottles have a large belly and then
a secondary swelling beneath the neck that can
be either globular or cone-like in shape.
In addition, there is a distinct group of bottles
that have less porous, burnished surfaces, and
are embellished with metal decoration. These

attractive pots with their silver elephantshaped finials redolent of the Kingdom of a
Million Elephants as Laos was once known,
appear to have been for ritual, rather than
personal use.
Travellers to Laos and Thailand in the 19th
century remarked on the prevalence of water
bottles or goblets. A letter from Father Brugire
written in 1824 states, the earthenware jars
made by the people of Xieng Mai are much
esteemed as water coolers. They are very
porous and of various colours- white, red and
black. Some of them are moulded in silver.
(Bowring, J. vol. 1, 1857:21) Another report
on Laos, from 1904, includes the following
Silver BOTTLE, h. 34 cm.,

located in Laos, 2009,
private collection.
Photo: Ann Proctor
statement when enumerating various types

of manufactured items: a large amount of
unglazed pottery is manufactured, chiefly for
domestic use, e.g. water-jars, cooking-pots,
goblets, flower pots, etc. Most of these are
of their natural red colour with an incised
design, but the water-goblets are frequently
black and of an elegant shape (Carter,
1988:28). Both these statements refer to the
area of Thailand around Chiang Mai that was
once under Lao control.
When the sun is in line with the water bottle,
is a saying recorded by a French traveller,
Roland Dorgels, regarding the practice
of time keeping amongst ethnic groups in
the area of what is now central Vietnam,
adjacent to Laos. Dorgels explained that as
there were no relevant mechanical devices,
time was reckoned by various fundamental
characteristics of the diurnal pattern. When
the sun was in line with the water bottle was,
according to Dorgels, equivalent to 10 am,
based on the alignment of the sun and the
bottom of the water bottle when it was raised
for drinking. (Dorgels, 1926: 283-4)
This saying begs reflection on the life of these
mountain dwelling people. It is highly likely
that ceramic water bottles were widely used
by the populace who were reliant on water
from wells or rivers. Taking a mid-morning
drink from such vessels was no doubt a
regular practice. Nowadays, why bother
to use an earthenware bottle when plastic
bottles are so readily available? While
in the cities, one can obtain a bottle of
water directly from the refrigerator and
not have to depend on the cooling effect
of evaporation. And of course, most
people wear watches or tell the time of
day from their mobile telephone!
There are a number of
relatively recent reports
about the production of
earthenware water bottles.
One is by Ning-Sheng
Wang, concerning his
research of the mid 1960s
in southern Yunnan Province
on the ceramic practices of Tai
ethnic minorities. His research
was carried out in two areas where
earthenware ceramics are produced at
certain times of the year in order to
supplement income from agricultural
produce. Wang observed that, in the
Mengjiao region, fine red earthenware
vessels were originally made by
women. He also noted that sacrificial
wares for Buddhist temples were once
in production (Wang, 1989:3)
10
In Jinghong region, earthenware pottery

production allegedly dates from 1860 but
is now restricted to a number of elderly
women. The wares were formed from an ash
gray coloured clay. Wang noted that ball
bottom vases were amongst the wares being
produced and states that: The surface of
the vases could be plain, or decorated with
basket or criss-cross pattern. Some even have
basket pattern at the lower part of the vase
and criss-cross pattern around the shoulder.
The vases are mostly used to contain water,
grain, or glutinous rice, or strapped with
bamboo rope to carry water. (Wang 1989:10)
He also mentions that miniature versions of
these containers were once made for use in
the temple to the village god.
Shippen, in his fascinating book Traditional
Ceramics of Southeast Asia, mentions
earthenware water bottles made by women in
the Malaysian village of Sayong. Again, only
two elderly women were left making labu or
water bottles. The claimed function of the
bottles was to keep the water cool, however
in Sayong, water kept in those bottles was
also considered to have special medicinal
qualities. (Shippen 2005:195)
In a study of pottery villages in Shan State,
Burma, 1991-94, Charlotte Reith described
women making water-offering vases for
Buddhist shrines. Her illustrations and
descriptions are of pots with a simpler shape
and reduced surface area, more in keeping
with ritual rather than practical use. (Reith
1997: 75)
Thus far, the evidence relating to the Lao
water bottles seems to accord with the
widely held view that the manufacture of
earthenware ceramics fired above ground is
womens work in Southeast Asian societies.
Stonewares on the other hand, which are
fired to a higher temperature in specially built
kilns, tend to be made by men.
Although I have been to Laos a number of times,
both in the cities and in the countryside, I have
never noticed anybody using earthenware
water bottles. Various people with whom I
have discussed this topic, however, do recall
their use. The Washington based scholar,
Mary Slusser, recalled people drinking water
poured directly from the bottles during the
1950s and one time resident of Vientiane,
writer and TAASA member, Claudia Hyles,
reported that in 1988/89 water bottles were
placed on the verandah of the Lao National
Library, where breezes would most likely
cool the water. Workers poured water from
these bottles into their own beakers. Another
person, and member of the Lao royal family
Water Bottle, located in Laos, h. 26 cm, private collection. Photo: Ann Proctor
Mai, Northern Thailand by TAASA members

Gay Spies and Sheila Sippel. Furthermore,
there are increasingly large numbers of silver
versions of the shape currently sold in Laos.
The elaborate, overall decorative patterns
on these silver pots appear to be directly
related to the temple decorations recorded by
Parmentier in the first half of the 20th century
and still evident in the many Buddhist
Temples in Laos and Thailand today. Such
patterns exhibit a horror vaccui and reflect
a different intent from the decoration on
the earthenware examples. A number of the
stylish shops in Vientiane today sell lamps
that consist of earthenware water bottle bases.
In other cases, the pots are used to display
dried flower arrangements. A most intriguing
re-use is the replication of the shape in wood
by a French sculptor based in Vientiane.
As water is now widely available from
reticulated sources and the plastic water
bottle is ubiquitous, the original use for these
earthenware pots seems to be redundant.
While no longer functioning as part of
the time telling vocabulary, their future
nevertheless seems assured in transformed
ways: as fascinating, appropriate technology
from a bygone era, as decorator items and as
art objects.
Ann Proctor is a member of the TAASA management
committee and teaches Asian Art History at the
National Art School, Sydney. She is extremely
grateful to the many people who have provided
information about these water bottles.
REFERENCES
Bowring, J., 1857, rep.1975. The Kingdom and People of Siam,
vol. 11 AMS, New York.
Carter, A. Cecil, (ed.) 1988. Kingdom of Siam, 1904, Siam Society.
Conway, S., 2006. Power Dressing: Lanna Shan Siam 19th Century
Court Dress, River Books.
now living in Hawaii, told me that the royal

family had silver versions of these pots, such
as those on display and labelled court regalia
in the 2006 exhibition Power Dressing at the
Jim Thompson Museum, Bangkok (Conway
2006:06).
The limited knowledge available about the
design and origins of these water bottles
raises a perennial question in ceramics:
whether the ceramic form was based on
a metal prototype or vice versa. Some of
the ceramic bottles would appear to have
been inspired by natural forms, such as the
double gourd shape or the body of the star
fruit with its distinctive lobes. These bottles
tend to be red coloured and many are found
in Thailand in the Lanna region. Others, I
am assured by practising potters, follow a
metallic prototype, as their angles and flat
surfaces are more attuned to working in nonplastic material rather than clay. Such bottles
tend to be blackish, though this is not always
the case.
Dorgels Roland, 1926. On the Mandarin Road, The Century

Company, New York.
Parmentier, Henri, 1954. LArt du Laos, E.F.E.O. Hanoi.
Reith, Charlotte, 1997. Comparison of Three Pottery Villages in
Shan State, Burma, The Journal of Burma Studies, vol.1 pp.45-82.
It is possible that the forms based on a metal

prototype may be linked to the Indian kundika
vessel, which spread into Southeast Asia
along with the Buddhist and Hindu faiths.
The double-gourd type form may be based
on locally available vegetal prototypes or
linked to the prevalent use of this shape,
redolent with Daoist meanings, within
Chinese communities. The name for Laos,
Vietnam and Cambodia, Indochina, reflects
this duality of influences.
Shippen, M., 2005. The Traditional Ceramics of Southeast Asia,

University of Hawaii Press.
Wang, Ning-Shen, An Ethnoarchaeological Study on the
Pottery Making of the Tai People in Yunnan in Essays on
Ethnoarchaeology, Cultural Relics Publishing Clearing House,
Beijing, 1989
http:/SEAsianCeramics.asia.si.edu
Earthenware water bottles appear to be still

used for ritual purposes, as was recently
noted at the Loy Krathong festival in Chiang
11
AN AU S TRALA S IAN C E RAMIC S MU S E UM IN F U P ING , CHINA

Janet Mansfield
Opening ceremony of Australasian Ceramics Museum, Fuping, May 2007. Photo: Janet Mansfield
n Australasian Ceramics Museum in

Fuping, China? A title like that begs
many questions. How did this happen, who is
involved and why Fuping? What is its purpose
and who will visit it? Let me explain.
Some years ago, geophysicist, Dr Ichi Hsu,
retired from his business making silicone
gel for the telephone industry and decided
to devote his life to ceramic art. He had
always been interested in ceramics and
had set up a studio in Beijing, becoming
involved in galleries selling ceramics. He also
established a bilingual magazine for people
interested in finding out what was happening
in contemporary ceramics in China and, for
Chinese ceramists, what was happening in
the many clay events around the world.
Over a period of nine years Dr Hsu came
to Gulgong in NSW three times to meet
Australian and international ceramists during
such events and, on one occasion I set up a
meeting involving Australian ceramists and
craft organisations to gauge interest in an
Australian ceramics museum in Fuping.
Fuping, 70km north of Xian, boasts a major
brick and tile factory, FULE, which caters to
the buoyant Chinese building and restoration
industry. Dr Hsu persuaded the owners,
in particular Xu Dufeng, that FULE could
be a part of the current world interest in
contemporary ceramics by supporting a
ceramic centre, not only to serve as a tourist
attraction but as a living, working entity

which would bring people from all over the
world to stay, make work and leave their
ceramics behind in purpose-built museums.
This would both promote the factorys image
and help Chinese ceramic artists who had
hitherto not been exposed to contemporary
trends and movements in world ceramics.
Australasia is proud to be named as one of a

number of museums on the 1000-acre orchard
site: it is a beautifully designed brick building
based on the form of an emperors coat
sleeves, his hands folded inside his cuffs. This
circular building presents the work of more
that 20 New Zealand and Australian ceramic
artists who spent up to a month working in
studios in the factory, using the factory clays,
glazes and kilns, and taking advantage of the
technical assistance available. Full board and
lodging was also provided, the ambience was
welcoming and comfortable, the food was
excellent and even our clay bespattered clothes
were mysteriously collected and presented to
us the same evening, fresh and clean.
The Australasian Museum is one of about
14 national museums on the property, each
offering a different cultural flavour to the
visitor. France, a combined Scandinavia,
North America, South America, Canada,
the UK and other European countries such
as Germany and Spain, all have dedicated
spaces in impressive custom-built museums.
One large arched building houses Chinese
traditional and folk works, while in a 20m high
dome, the work of emerging artists, resulting
from international competitions held every
three years, shows the trends in education
in ceramics over past years. These emerging
Toni Warburton working in Fuping, 2006. Photo: Janet Mansfield
12
Interior of Museum at the Fuping Art Ceramics Village. Photo: Janet Mansfield
artists compete for prizes that offer both

money and residencies in Fuping, the next one
to take place in November 2010. A specialised
permanent and growing exhibition housed
in a separate museum space shows the work
of members of the International Academy
of Ceramics and there is a resource centre
containing books, magazines and videos.
There are on-going activities concerned with
this. Several of the national groups have
continued to build on their experience in
Fuping, holding exhibitions, seminars and
further study in their home countries. The
Australian and New Zealand ceramists
came together in Melbourne, in June 2009, to
present an exhibition at Skepsi On Swanston
Gallery, Carlton. A catalogue was produced
showing images of the work made in China
and also the work made as a consequence of
their residency. Statements as to the effect of
such a study time in China made interesting
reading and this idea was further explored
during a seminar held at RMIT at the time
of the exhibition. A further exhibition of the

Fuping Good Company ceramists will be
held in July 2010 at Masterworks Gallery in
Auckland, New Zealand.
Fuping, or rather, FULE, is not standing still
either. Next year, four new museums for a
further four national groups will be built and
filled by ceramists who have been invited
to live and work at the Fuping Ceramic Art
Village. A graduate school for ceramic art has
already started hiring professional staff and
the site is almost ready. Plans are in hand
for a five-star hotel and apartment blocks
have already been built. A five-year plan of
expansion has been mapped out and five
galleries, including one in Melbourne, will be
established to sell high quality ceramic art,
similar to Gallery XYZ in the 798 Dashanzi
Art District in Beijing.
The future expansion of ceramics in these
museums seems assured with the continuing
enthusiasm of the international ceramic
Janet Mansfield in the Fuping studio, 2007
community. Those who have attended once

are welcome to return, and on second or
subsequent visits retain some of their works
for sale in Beijing or at one of the other
venues. Others are invited to apply to add
their works to the appropriate national
museum. At the beginning, one artist was
chosen to invite other colleagues from his
or her home country but now it seems to be
more open for all ceramic artists to apply. Not
only does one have the residency experience
of working with unfamiliar materials and
using unknown equipment, there is the
interaction with Chinese people, and access
to other Chinese arts including concerts,
puppet shows, fireworks, calligraphy and
more. There is no doubt that Xu Dufeng has
a vision for his factory and its expansion into
the art world. Together with Ichi Hsu and
the artistic director of FULE, Fu Qiang, they
are on a fast moving track. Buildings seem
to be erected overnight, hundreds of workers
pouring concrete, laying bricks, landscaping
gardens, placing ancient mill stones and other
artefacts at strategic focal points. As well,
artists are specifically invited to build freestanding art works in the orchard.
I have been to the Fuping Ceramic Art Village
several times, once as a resident artist and at
other times to be part of the emerging artist
competition and accompanying seminars,
and to enjoy the hospitality, generosity and
enthusiasm of the people of Fuping.
Janet Mansfield is a ceramic artist, author and
President of the International Academy of Ceramics,
Geneva, Switzerland. She lives in Gulgong NSW.
13
ARTI S T P RO F IL E : W ON - S E OK KIM S AU S TRALIAN BUNCH E ONG W AR E

Min-Jung Kim
Kim is a Korean Australian

W on-Seok
ceramic artist who has been making his
buncheong wares in Australia for more than 20
years. Buncheong, literally meaning pottery
decorated with white slip and covered in a
pale bluish-green glaze, is a type of ceramic
developed in Korea during the 15th and
16th centuries. It is known as mishima by
the Japanese by whom it is also prized.
Historically, buncheong ware reflects the
transitional period from Goryeo celadon (9181392 CE) to Joseon porcelain (1392-1910 CE).
The clay and glaze of buncheong ceramics are
similar to those of celadon, however buncheong
is decorated with Joseon style motifs, as well
as employing decorative techniques different
from those found on Goryeo celadon.
Won-Seok Kim was born in Korea in 1959,

graduated from Hannam University with
Bachelor of Arts, then moved to Australia
in 1988. He continued his studies at the
University of Sydney and eventually
established his studio in 1999 at Mangrove
Mountain in NSW. He has taught ceramics
at the National Art School, University of
Sydney and University of Western Sydney.
The exhibition Link: Ceramics from Gongju and
Sydney held at the National Art School (8 July
- 15 August 2009) was a result of his strong
interest in the interaction of contemporary
Korean and Australian studio ceramics.
Kims introduction to ceramics came from
none other than the master potter Jeongha
Lee more than 40 years ago when he visited

Icheon in Gyeonggi province, Korea, where
court ceramic ware was produced during the
Joseon dynasty. As a high school student,
he instantly fell in love with the traditional
process of throwing pots on a wheel and kiln
firing. He then decided to study ceramic art
more systemically. However, life on campus
in South Koreas universities of the 1980s
was filled with student protest clashes with
police. Japanese occupation (1910-1945)
and the Korean War (1950-1953) separated
Korea from its past and there was a focus on
Western aesthetic. He says: At my university,
I produced pseudo Western work and
absorbed Western art and cultural theory.
Kim would return to his master potter in
Icheon whenever he could to practise the
contemplative art of traditional ceramics.
Won-Seok Kim reluctantly calls himself
artist. He says: To be a true ceramic artist,
one must be able to understand the nature
of earth, and based on this understanding,
one must encounter the clay as if it was his
lover. He continues, Clay is very delicate
and sometimes fickle like a woman. I must
confess that I have not mastered this thing
fully but I just help the material to build its
own art form, just like new lovers learn to live
together and adjust over time to achieve the
most satisfying union.
Won-Seok Kim remains loyal to the traditional
concept of being a master potter or jang-in in
Korean. Jang-in devote most of their time to
mastering potters skills. Sometimes, the process
is more important than the product. In making
ceramics, jang-in first learn to understand
the nature of the material. They then master
throwing skills. A well-made pot has to have
uniform thickness and it must not be too heavy.
If the wall of a pot is too thin or uneven, it will
collapse in the kiln. Speed is essential as the
longer one works on the neck area the greater
the possibility that the body loses proportion.
Koreans and people in other parts of Asia,
often judge the quality of a ceramic work by
tapping and listening to its musical sound
as well as assessing its form, colour and
overall design. Well-made pots have clear
and resonating sounds. The skill of making
such ceramic wares can only be developed
by continuing effort and endless practice.
Won-Seok Kim is an artist who stands up to
this challenge.
Buncheong ware vase, Won-Seok Kim. High fired stoneware using inhwa and myeonsanggam techniques.
Private collection through Cudgegong Gallery. Photo: Park Ung
14
He does not seek superfluous beauty nor

does he intend to convey a specific narrative.
His task is to push the limit of the material,
to challenge earth and fire while pursuing
his own aesthetic and also admitting to the
role of some luck. Kim is not interested in
creating different forms. Instead, each time,
he strives to achieve his perfect form. He only
selects pots that are light in weight and ring
when tapped, a process inevitably resulting in
the destruction of pieces that do not meet his
stringent criteria.
This is not to say that Kims work lacks
artistic expression. His brushwork technique
has evolved from his admiration and respect
for traditional Chinese calligraphy. He talks
of the single line that conveys the idea of
one-stroke. The universe is portrayed in
miniature, nature reduced to its quintessential
essence, conveyed in the simple gestural
brushstroke signifying a tree or a mountain
ridge. Direct and free flowing, this one-stroke
could liberate the artist from intellectual to

intuitive knowledge. Kim says that buncheong
wares, through their spontaneous creation,
capture the spirit of one-stroke, enabling
him to understand and impart the element
of qi, explained as the unifying life-force
connecting all things.
Traditionally, there are many different
decorative techniques used in the making of
buncheong ware. Kim favours four techniques:
gwiyal (brushed slip), inhwa (stamped),
sanggam (inlaid) and cheolhwa (underglaze
iron painting).
The gwiyal technique refers to the application
of white slip to the surface of the vessel with
a coarse brush, to which the term refers.
Kims brushstrokes are highly expressive
and dynamic. The inhwa technique involves
imprinting vessels with a stamp that has
a design carved onto it, thus saving the
time and efforts of having to incise each
and every motif, as well as creating a more

uniform design. He also uses sanggam (inlay),
in particular myeonsanggam (surface inlay).
Sanggam is a decorative technique particularly
popular during the Goryeo period for green
glazed celadon. Originally, linear designs
dominated but this gradually developed into
overall surface designs.
Won-Seok Kim calls his work Australian
buncheong. He notes: Traditional buncheong
wares were originally developed in Korea.
However, my buncheong is exclusively
Australian. I use Australian clay, which is
different from Korean clay. The clay differs in
composition: it contains calcium, feldspar and
iron, which lower the temperature and impart
colour to the clay. So my work is uniquely
Australian. Of course, I value my Korean
heritage and there can be no doubt that I use
traditional techniques in my work but I create
my buncheong ware in the Australian context.
My one stroke is a miniature of a gum tree
and my glaze represents Australian land.
Note: Korean terms Chosn, Koryo and
punchong were romanised in 2000 to become
Joseon, Goryeo and buncheong
Min-Jung Kim is Curator of Asian Arts & Design at
the Powerhouse Museum.
REFERENCES
Clark, Christine (ed.), 2005. Echoes of home: memory and
mobility in recent Austral-Asian art, exhibited at the Museum of
Brisbane, Brisbane City Council.
Kim, Jae-Yeol, 2000. The technique of Chosn dynasty ceramics,
in: Claire Roberts and Michael Brand (eds.), Earth, spirit, fire:
Korean masterpieces of the Chosn dynasty, Powerhouse
Publishing.
Leake, Gayl, 2003. Won-Seok Kims Australian punchong ware,
Ceramics: Art and Perception, issue 52.
LEFT: Buncheong ware vase, Won-Seok Kim. High fired

stoneware using Gwiyal technique. Collection of WonSeok Kim. Photo: Park Ung
FAR LEFT: Buncheong ware vase, Won-Seok Kim. High fired

stoneware using Cheolhwa technique. Private collection
through Cudgegong Gallery. Photo: Park Ung
15
THE NAT YUEN COLLECTION OF CHINESE ANTIQUITIES AT THE UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND

Gordon Craig
he Nat Yuen Collection of Chinese

Antiquities was gifted to the University
of Queensland by Dr Natalis (Nat) Yuen
and housed in the Universitys Art Museum.
His first donation in 1994 coincided with the
re-opening of the historic Customs House
building in Brisbane, acquired and refurbished
by the University of Queensland. Several
subsequent donations from Dr Yuen ensued,
notably in 2005 and 2006. The Collection now
incorporates just over 100 pieces.
Dr Yuen, a resident of Hong Kong and regular
visitor to Australia, graduated in medicine from
the University of Queensland as a classmate of
the Universitys former Chancellor, Sir Llew
Edwards, AC. Dr Yuen has a commendable

record in community service and is, or has
been, President of the Hong Kong Medical
Association, President of the Hong Kong College
of General Practitioners, Honorary Professor of
Family Medicine (CU) andHonorary Treasurer
of the Hong Kong Academy of Medicine.
He is a published author of numerous medical
articles. His interests include the practice of
Chinese martial arts and the study and collection
of Chinese antiquities. Dr Yuen has been a keen
collector of Chinese antiquities since his father,
who was a scholar and a connoisseur of such
artworks and relics, gave him several pieces of
porcelain and paintings in the late 1960s.
The Collection contains work dating back to

the Neolithic period and spans all dynastic
periods with only one exception - the Liao
Dynasty (916 1125 CE). Dr Yuen collected
pieces as they became available rather
than doggedly searching for specific items.
There are several hidden gems in the
Collection. Neolithic tripod ewer (Dawenkou
culture) c. 4100 2600 BCE is one of the
earliest pieces in the Collection. Dawenkou
is the name given to the culture that created
such pieces. These were first discovered
in Shandong Province, but have also been
found in other areas of China. Its complicated
and elegant design would suggest that the
piece was not built for daily use but rather
as a ceremonial object. Fortunately it was
buried with much soil inside and outside the
vessel, providing protection that assisted in
keeping the object intact, for often such ewers
are discovered broken and subsequently
repaired. This design is an early example
of pouring vessels reminiscent of animal
forms. The coiled ewer was made in two
parts, with the join across the body of
the vessel disguised under decoration.
It is of archaeological significance
and evidence of the sophisticated
culture of the time.
Another early piece is a Neolithic
storage jar (kuan), Majiayao culture,
Banshan phase c. 2500 BCE. The
Majiayao culture refers to
Neolithic communities that lived
in the region of the upper Yellow
River in Gansu. Villages in such
communities are believed to have
had dedicated potters that repeated
their own particular style of pot with
little variation. As may be expected,
this was most likely a practical rather
than ceremonial piece. The process of
glazing as a sealant was not developed until
about 500 BCE so the painted decorative
patterns on this piece were added after the
work was fired.
There are a number of bronze items in the
Collection, in addition to pottery and ceramics.
Bronze tripod vessel (Ding), Han Dynasty 206 BCE
220 CE is a ritual cooking vessel, most likely from
northern China as indicated by the zoomorphic
decoration. It would probably have been a tomb
object, or part of a display of items within a tomb.
The lid was built to be inverted and used as a
Blue and white Grape Dish, Ming dynasty, Yongle period 1403 1424. Blue pigment on underglazed white porcelain.
6.9 x 37.8 cm diam. Collection of The University of Queensland. Gift of Dr Nat Yuen through the Cultural Gifts Program, 2005.
16
photo: Carl Warner
Neolithic tripod ewer (Dawenkou culture)

c. 4100-2600 BCE. Earthenware. 31.0 x 15.0 cm x 13.0 cm.
Collection of The University of Queensland. Gift of
Dr Nat Yuen through the Cultural Gifts Program, 1995.
Bronze tripod vessel (Ding), Han Dynasty 206 BCE 220 CE. Bronze. 15.0 x 19.0 cm dia. Collection of The University
photo: Carl Warner
of Queensland. Gift of Dr Nat Yuen through the Cultural Gifts Program, 1995. photo: Carl Warner
serving dish. It features a ring ornamentation,

which cleverly functions as a foot when inverted
for its secondary use. The lid design features a
group of three interwoven tigers and a band of
six tigers, while the body design features two
additional bands of six tigers each. Such animal
motifs are symbols of strength and power.
One of the University of Queensland Art
Museum staffs favourite pieces in the
collection is a Horse and groom, Tang Dynasty
618 907 CE. While areas have faded and
worn over time, generally the item is in very
good condition. The prancing horse stands
at 54 cm in height, turning to the left with
its right leg raised. The horses body was
cast in two parts, as was the head, and was
joined at the neck. Unusually it features a

detachable saddle (and a tail, which enhances
the attractive nature of the piece but is clearly
a recent addition). The horses groom, with
the reins he once held long-lost, is typical
figure work of this era.
An outstanding piece of blue and white-ware,
so often associated with traditional Chinese
ceramics, is a Grape Dish, Ming Dynasty,
Yongle period 1403 1424 CE. It is quite a
rare, finely-crafted piece with three bunches of
grapes on the vine decorating the inner surface
of the bowl. Encircling this is a series of twelve
spiralling flower motifs. The lip of the bowl is
finished with a continuous wave pattern.
Another fine example of blue and white-ware
in the Collection is a Jar with cover, Qing
Dynasty, Kangxi 1662-1722 CE. A well-preserved
example with ornate floral decoration, such
vessels were utilitarian by design (possibly as
wine or storage jars) and often kept in pairs.
One of the younger items in the Collection
is a Robins-egg glazed vase, Qing Dynasty,
Qianglong mark c.1840. Its descriptive title
refers to a Western glaze with similar
properties: both the blue colour and the
small egg-shaped patination that occurs in
the firing process. The vessel is embellished
with dragon decorations on either side of
the neck. Under the Qing dynasty in the 18th
and 19th centuries, new porcelain glazes
were developed and bright new colours

including greens, yellows, reds and blues
were introduced.
Even more recent pieces, a Pair of blue,
white and yellow dragon dishes, Qing Dynasty,
seal mark and period of Guangxu, 1875-1908
demonstrate one of these new glazes. In
excellent condition, the two wheel-thrown
dishes feature an imperial dragon with five
claws. The dragons are chasing flaming
pearls (symbols of knowledge) around cloud
formations. The use of yellow pigment was
reserved for the Imperial family and their
immediate relatives. This feature, combined
with the imperial dragon motif, makes such
dishes much sought after among collectors.
This Collection showcases the special features
of each major period of ceramic production in
China, such as form, patterns, clay types and
glazes. Spanning some 5,000 years of Chinese
culture, the Collection is of immeasurable
benefit to students and scholars of Chinese
antiquities as well as members of the general
community.By cultivating and enhancing the
appreciation of the arts and cultures of Asia,
Dr Yuen is fostering a better understanding of
people of our region.
Special thanks is extended to Lennart
Utterstrm for his assistance in providing
information for this article.
Gordon Craig is the Exhibitions Coordinator at the
UQ Art Museum in Brisbane and is also a practising
Blue and white jar with cover, Qing Dynasty, Kangxi
artist, writer and curator. He has an interest in many
1662 1722. Blue pigment on underglazed white porcelain.
aspects of art and has visited China on several
52.0 x 33.0 cm dia. Collection of The University of
occasions over the past five years.
Queensland. Gift of Dr Nat Yuen through the Cultural

Gifts Program, 2005. photo: Carl Warner
17
MOVING TH E P A S T TO TH E P R E S E NT : A S I E M R E A P - ANGKOR KHM E R R E S ID E NC E

Darryl Collins
Faade of house, lit at early evening: photo: John Gollings
n my 60th year (61st by the Khmer calendar)

- an auspicious one as it turned out - I
decided in 2007 to move from Phnom Penh to
Siem Reap. I had been extremely fortunate in
the Cambodian capital, residing since 1994 in
what is now known as The Chinese House
built by Tan Bunpa (1871-1952). This is a
1905 Sino-Khmer brick residence facing the
Tonle Sap river, approximately 1.5km north
of Wat Phnom. A new life has commenced
for this building that now houses a decadent
Indochinese bar upstairs, with the ground
floor space alternating as performance space
or art gallery.
The sale of this property hastened my decision
to move from Phnom Penh. I needed to find
a house in Siem Reap but had not yet decided
on what or where it should be.
Enter the architect
Graduate architect Hok Sokol had been our

associate research assistant on a co-authored
book, Building Cambodia: New Khmer
Architecture 1953-1970, published in 2006.
Our conversations had sometimes focused
on exemplary 1960s concrete forms and
modernist design that referenced traditional
Khmer structures in wood. I once remarked
... that one day, I wished to live in a traditional
wooden house. He remembered this snippet
of conversation.
Sokol was then a member of a Centre for
Khmer Studies documentation team that had
visited several provinces to record wooden
heritage, both extant and at risk. While
visiting Kompong Cham province, the team
recorded what was to become my future
house. Years later, the family who owned the
house proposed demolishing it, as its elderly
occupant could no longer negotiate the stairs,
and contacted Sokol, asking if he knew of
anyone who wanted to purchase the building.
reconstruct it in Siem Reap. The traditional

structure of the house, held together by
wooden wedges and pins, allowed it to be
literally pulled apart. Taking advantage of
the heightened level of the Mekong in the
rainy season, the pieces were transported
piece by piece in multiple moves, initially by
small local canoes through canals to the edge
of the island, then by larger river ferries to
Kompong Cham provincial town. From there,
a large truck and trailer was used to transport
the entire load to Siem Reap, with smaller
trucks and then hand carts needed on the
final stretch to haul the wood over the narrow
lanes leading to the houses new site.
A team of some ten carpenters under the
supervision of Sokol accomplished this move
of some 30 tonnes of wood over a distance of
315km. It is to all these people that I owe the
house as it stands today in Siem Reap. The
house is now located in secluded Wat Damnak
village, to the south of a Buddhist monastery.
It rests nearby the Siem Reap River, on the
opposite side to the Old Market that today
features a series of colonial shop-houses
bustling with cafes and tourist facilities.
and Kompong Cham to Kampuchea Krom

(the Mekong delta region). This perhaps
accounts for the superb quality and variety of
Cambodian timbers used in this house and its
excellent state of preservation despite years
of neglect and occasional seasonal flooding
of the island.
Grandfather Lons rong dol style residence
dates to c.1915 and employs five varieties
of Cambodian hardwood. It took some five
years to choose and collect the wood to
construct the original house. The term rong
dol: seems to derive from the expression
ron phdon tol meaning house whose roof
plates expand, subsequently shortened to
ron tol. This construction style, now quite
rare in Cambodia, results in a long protruding
roof or awning that extends from the house
onto the verandah. (Tainturier, 2006:78-80).
I vividly remember my first visit to the house

and meeting its owners. In hindsight, given
the challenges that lay ahead, this resulted in
a somewhat impulsive decision to preserve
what was clearly a masterwork by relocating
the entire house to Siem Reap. Handwritten,
thumb-printed contract papers were drawn
up that very day.
Masterpiece in wood
The house is supported by large columns,

decorated and lacquered by hand. Its interior is
richly decorated with intricately carved panels
and woodwork. Both the screen inside the
house and the outside window shutters and
doors are carved with flower and fruit motifs,
while fretwork runs around the entire building,
letting in the breezes from the large terrace.
It took a total of 11 months to disassemble the

wooden building, transport it from its location
on a small island in Kompong Cham and
Interviews with the Kompong Cham family

revealed that Lon, the original owner of the
house, was a timber merchant who traded
on the Mekong River from Kompong Thom
Some concessions to modern requirements

have been made while reconstructing the
house. A reinforced concrete foundation over
18
crushed stones was laid down before erecting

the house on its new stilts, to support the
weight of the new clay roof tiles and raise
the structure above flood level. A concrete
base, 20cm thick, was poured to create a patio
underneath the building, a cool place of retreat
when the weather gets really hot. A new
wing, also on stilts, has been built to replace
a similar structure serving as a kitchen in the
original house, which had collapsed and could
not be moved. In addition to the kitchen, the
new wing houses modern facilities such as a
number of internal bathrooms.
Wooden houses require constant maintenance

and are considered old-fashioned and
country-style, the very antithesis of a
significant sector of the populations housing
and lifestyle aspirations. These properties are
falling into disrepair and being abandoned,
with the young increasingly gravitating to
city life. Ageing and often ailing family
members are unable to care for this wooden
heritage. Remote locations and small villages
that have in the past protected these treasures
are neither able nor willing to preserve them.
The Cambodian government has no heritage
policy related to wooden structures.
A tradition continued
Traditional wooden architecture represents

a significant part of Cambodias cultural
heritage and deserves recognition and
protection. For contemporary Cambodians,
however, the ideal home is seated firmly on
the ground, built of bricks and mortar, glazed
and air-conditioned. Village life is rapidly
modernising, with the mass media touting
an everything new is best mentality attuned
to the latest mobile, motorcycle and fashion
accessories.
In practical terms, there are several alternatives

for family owners of extant traditional
wooden houses: continue to live in and repair
deteriorating structures; demolish and sell for
wood value alone; sell decorative salvaged
sections to dealers and use the rest for firewood;
de-construct, move and re-construct part or
whole of the structure to a different location;
or, leave in situ to nature and the elements
until total collapse. Unfortunately it is the
land, rather than the house that is of greatest
value and the situation can be complicated by

difficulties in resolving title when houses are
transferred to several successors.
Early last year, application was made for the
2009 UNESCO Asia-Pacific Heritage Awards
for this Rong Dol-style Wooden Khmer
Residence, Wat Damnak Village, Siem Reap,
Cambodia. Although the announcement of the
awards in September did not include the house,
the Jury: noted that the project reflects a
noteworthy commitment to conserving the
heritage resources of the region.
The Jury further commented:
The Jury would like to commend the efforts
to safeguard a vernacular Khmer building of
significant architectural quality, which has
the potential to encourage other homeowners
to also conserve their buildings. The Jury
recognizes that the relocation of the house is
common practice in this building tradition and
has allowed it to be saved.
For the time being, the house is a private
dwelling, but my intention is to preserve
A 360-degree digital panorama centred in the main living space that emphasises the decorative qualities of the house and its furnishings: photo: Paul Stewart
19
Interior of main living space, with slatted wooden floor and filigree Sino-Khmer dividing screen: photo: John Gollings
Siem Reap house since 2007 or: The Chinese

House website: http://www.chinesehouse.asia/.
Darryl Collins holds an MA from the ANU. He
first journeyed to Cambodia in 1994 with a team
from the National Gallery of Australia, to assist the
National Museum of Cambodia in Phnom Penh.
He co-authored the publication, Building Cambodia:
New Khmer Architecture 1953-1970 (2006) and
for some five years lectured at the Department of
Archaeology, Royal University of Fine Arts, Phnom
Penh. In 2004, Darryl began part-time work at the
National Museum, Phnom Penh as manager for the
6 year Collection Inventory Project.
REFERENCES
AsiaLIFE, February 2009, pp.24-25, Moving home, text by Johan
Smits, photos by Thomas Angus.
Cambodia Daily, 21-22 June 2008, pp.8-9, Making the move:
modern living in a traditional Khmer home, text by Michelle
Vachon, photos by Vinh Dao and Hok Sokol.
Cambodia Daily, 27-28 September 2008, pp.10-11, The history
of home, text by Michelle Vachon, photos supplied.
Elegant Homes, June-July 2008, pp.22-29, The house that flew,
text by Lis Meyers, photos by Thomas Angus
this heritage for future generations. Into

the future, my wish is to see this valuable
Cambodian cultural asset managed by a
responsible culturally-based organisation that
will use it as a visiting scholars residence.
JAPAN: AUTUMN,
ISLANDS AND ART
Im currently investigating legal processes to

ensure this reality.
Further information can be found on my website at:
http://www.darryl-siemreap.com/ under Gallery:
BURMA: THE
ESSENTIAL
EXPERIENCE
29 October
24 October
17 November 2010
09 November 2010
Japan is a two-sided coin: one Designed and hosted by TAASA
post-modernist side embraces contributor Dr Bob Hudson, our
longstanding annual Burma
cutting-edge technology; the
program features extended stays
other reveres and preserves
in medieval Mrauk U, capital
fine artistic and cultural
of the lost ancient kingdom of
traditions. Ann MacArthur,
Arakan (now Rakhine State)
Senior Coordinator of Asian
and Bagan, rivalling Angkor
Programs at the Art Gallery
Wat as Southeast Asias
of NSW, is our experienced
Japanophile leader. Kyushu and richest archaeological precinct.
Shikoku predominate including Exciting experiences in Yangon,
Inle Lake, Mandalay and a
the Setouchi International Art
private cruise down the mighty
Festival based on the islands
Ayeyarwady are also included.
of the Inland Sea. A lengthy
stay in Kyoto, home to 20% of
Land Only cost per person
Japan's national treasures, is
twinshare ex Yangon $4750
our spectacular autumn finale.
twinshare ex Fukuoka $9000
HERITAGE DESTINATIONS
N AT U R E B U I L D I N G S P E O P L E T R AV E L L E R S
PO Box U237, University of Wollongong NSW 2500 Australia

p +61 2 4228 3887 e heritagedest@bigpond.com
ABN 21 071 079 859 LIC NO TAG 1747
20
Tainturier Franois (ed), 2006. Wooden architecture of Cambodia:

a disappearing heritage, Centre for Khmer Studies, Phnom Penh.
CAMBODIA:
ANGKOR WAT
AND BEYOND
BACKROADS
OF BURMA
LAOS: LAND OF THE

LOTUS-EATERS
07 November
24 November 2010
Angkors timeless grandeur is
unmissable, an unforgettable
travel memory. Yet Cambodia
offers a host of other important
cultural and travel experiences:
outstanding ancient,
vernacular and French colonial
architecture; spectacular riverine
environments; a revitalising
urban capital in Phnom Penh;
interesting cuisine and beautiful
countryside. Join expatriate
museologist, author, Siem Reap
resident and TAASA contributor
(see page 18 of this issue)
Darryl Collins on this latest,
updated version of our highly
evaluated 2008 and 2009
programs.
twinshare ex Phnom Penh
$4700
16 November
02 December 2010
One trip to Burma is never
enough. Backroads of Burma is
ideal for the second-time visitor
or indeed first-time travellers
desiring remote and rustic
locations. Starting and finishing
in Yangon, our schedule wends
south into Mon State, visiting
Kyaiktiyo and Moulmein
before heading north to Sri
Ksetra, the ancient Pyu capital.
Mystical Mount Popa, Bagan,
Monywa and the spectacular
cave temples of Po Win Taung,
Sagaing and Mandalay follow.
Dr Bob Hudson is program
leader.
twinshare ex Yangon $4150
27 January
10 February 2011
Enigmatic and relatively
undeveloped, landlocked
Laos offers travellers an
intimate glimpse of traditional
Southeast Asian life. Gradually
emerging from tumultuous
recent history, Laos is a gem of
Indochina with interesting art,
architecture, French and Lao
cuisine, intricate river systems,
and rugged highlands. Darryl
Collins, long term Southeast
Asian resident, has designed
and will guide a comprehensive
tour of Laos which includes the
wonderful historic royal city of
Luang Prabang and Wat Phu
Champasak.
twinshare ex Vientiane $4400
For a brochure or further information phone Ray Boniface at Heritage Destinations

on +61 2 4228 3887 or email heritagedest@bigpond.com or visit our website
www.heritagedestinations.com.au
IN THE P UBLIC DOMAIN: JAPANES E TREASUR ES AT TH E NATIONAL LIBRARY OF AU STRALIA

Joshi Enzetsu (Miss Speech), Hashimoto Chikanobu,
Anya Dettman with Mayumi Shinozaki
1890. From the series Magic Lantern Comparisons. Japanese

woodcut colour print on Hosho paper, 35.6 x 24 cm.
Collection of the National Library of Australia
hink of a library and you may think of

sombre rows of books, not the sinuous
lines and vibrant colours of ukiyo-e prints. But
since 2008 the National Library of Australia
has been steadily building a collection of
Japanese woodblock prints of the 19th to the
early 20th century. They have been selected
not for their artistic merits (beautiful though
many of them are) but rather for their value
as social history, as a visual supplement to the
Librarys extensive Japanese language book
collections. In particular they complement
the Harold Williams Collection of books
and manuscripts, which focuses on foreign
settlement in Japan since it opened up to
the West in the mid 19th century. But if the
perspective of the Williams Collection is that
of the outsider looking in, then the woodblock
print collection represents the view from
inside, that of the Japanese expressing their
own interests and concerns as they gaze not
only at their own rapidly changing society
but onto a wider world.
NLAs woodblock print collection reflects
several themes. The impact of the foreign
presence in Japan is seen in prints showing
a bustling foreign settlement in Japan - one
depicts a drunken Englishman gaily cavorting
in Yokohama. The ambivalence felt by some
towards the allure of the West is seen in
a print of a paddle-steamer heavily laden
with all kinds of wondrous foreign goods
now being introduced into Japan including
galoshes and dachshund dogs! Yet despite
the artists obvious fascination with the
exotic wares, he feels compelled to add the
cautionary comment: But perhaps it is better
to buy local goods after all.
Social and political satire is explored in
the collection, with many artists resorting
to allegory to escape the censors ire. The
brilliant Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1798-1861) is
the most represented artist in the collection,
creating dramatic and strikingly original
prints despite tight government control.
During a brief period (1841-1843) when artists
were forbidden to depict courtesans or actors,
he simply drew them instead as turtles with
human faces. He parodied clearly identifiable
officials as ghouls in legends of the past,
and courtesans and prominent figures as
habitus of seedy bathhouses run by sparrow
spirits. Contemporary issues are also evident
in vibrant and dramatic works depicting the
Japanese army at war in China.
Social changes brought with them new roles

and opportunities, especially for women.
The print Miss Speech shows a Japanese
woman in smart Western costume confidently
addressing a public gathering, watched with
approval by a woman in Japanese dress but
carrying a foreign book, dreaming that this
may be herself one day.
Yet for many, daily life continued as before.
Amusement and popular culture themes form
the largest sub-sets of the collection. Some
prints depict famous tourist destinations:
travel appears to have been as popular an
activity for the Japanese of the past as for
those in the present age. Another pastime was
reading, and not surprisingly the National
Library has been keen to acquire prints
depicting books and readers. Unexpectedly,
it has proved difficult to find images of
men reading all the prints acquired show
women, and from a variety of social classes,
attesting to a relatively high level of female
literacy. However, the sardonic title of a print
by Utamaro (1753-1806) can be translated
as Little Miss Know-it-all. It is not clear
whether he disapproves of the subject of her
reading matter or that she is reading at all!
Woodblock prints were an important element
of popular culture. During this period, larger
print-runs and cheaper prices meant that
this art form was more widely enjoyed, and
traditional subjects such as Kabuki theatre
scenes continued to be popular. Some of
the loveliest works in the collection are by a
woman artist, Tai Koun (d. 1936), originally
a student, then wife of artist Ogata Gekko.
Gekko was well-known for his work in a
variety of media, including watercolour, and
the influence of this technique can be seen
in Kouns series of prints featuring Kabuki
dances. With their fine lines, soft colours and
gentle movements she has given a traditional
theme a fresh look and a consciously artistic
interpretation. The National Library appears
to be the only institution holding a complete
set of all 14 prints in the series.
works in the Librarys collection, one is struck

by how, with their unusual perspectives, bold
lines and dramatic movements, they closely
resemble modern Japanese manga (cartoons).
This is not a coincidence: Japanese librarian
Mayumi Shinozaki views the significance of
the collection as demonstrating the central and
on-going importance of visual art in Japanese
popular culture, and she is actively acquiring
prints in which she sees the roots of manga,
now famous world-wide as an art form.
Anya Dettman is the Southeast Asia Curator, Asian
Collections at the National Library of Australia.
Mayumi Shinozaki is the Senior Librarian and Head
of the Japanese Unit. The NLA welcomes enquiries
on our collections (www.nla.gov.au/asian/).
Satirical prints such as Kuniyoshis, which

criticized the government, were popular with
merchants, who were financially powerful but
shut out from direct political involvement.
Kuniyoshi is remarkable for the extensive
variety of themes he explored: caricature,
erotica, landscapes, warriors, beauties, ghosts,
cats, actors, myths and legends. Looking at his
21
P R E CIOU S P LAYTHING S IN DUBLIN : S NU F F BOTTL E S AT TH E CH E S T E R B E ATTY LIBRARY

Christine Inglis
ublin and Asia is surely an oxymoron.

However, as participants in the 41st
annual convention of the International
Chinese Snuff Bottle Society (ICSBS) held in
Dublin from 20-23 October 2009 discovered,
the city is home to several major collections
of Asian art.
Among them is the Albert Bender Collection
of Asian Art at the National Museum of
Ireland. Alfred Bender, although born in
Dublin, emigrated as a teenager to the USA
where he became a successful insurance
broker and collector of Tibetan, Chinese and
Japanese art. A generous donor to many San
Francisco Bay area museums, his donation
to the National Museum of Ireland in the
early 1930s is dedicated to the memory of
his mother. The Dublin donation includes
a rare set of Thangkas (paintings on cotton)
of the Arhats (disciples) of Buddha and four
Lokapalas (Guardians) of the Four Quarters
of the World from a Tibetan-Buddhist temple
dating to the 18th century. As well, the
collection displays textiles associated with
the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911 CE), Japanese
Ukiyo-e (woodblock prints), a Daoist priests
robe from 17th/18th century China and a
small number of Chinese snuff bottles.
But what brought the ICSBS members to

Dublin was the opportunity to hold their
Convention in the Chester Beatty Library
located in Dublin Castle. The Library, which
in 2002 was awarded the title of European
Museum of the Year, houses the extensive
collection of manuscripts, miniature paintings,
prints, drawings, rare books and decorative
arts collected by the American born mining
engineer, Sir Alfred Chester Beatty (18751968) who relocated from London to Ireland
in 1950. The diverse collection is particularly
rich in items from Asia and the Middle East
including Egyptian papyri, Quran and other
illuminated manuscripts, Turkish and Persian
miniatures, Buddhist paintings and Japanese
woodblock prints.
For the snuff bottle collectors, the Librarys
major attraction was an exhibition of many
of the snuff bottles that Beatty had begun
collecting from his schooldays. The majority
of his nearly 2000 snuff bottles were collected
during the first two decades of the 20th
century. Beatty often gave away bottles to
family and friends and indeed sold one-third
of his collection through a London dealer
before moving to Dublin. Today the remaining
collection has 942 bottles. Coinciding with
the exhibition and the convention was the

publication of a catalogue of 275 of the most
important bottles held in the collection. The
beautiful images of the snuff bottles, the
detailed descriptions and, especially, the
discussion of their relationship to other
snuff bottles and wider traditions in Chinese
decorative arts, makes the book a delight for
those who are just discovering the world of
Chinese snuff bottles as well as an important
source for experts
Precious Playthings, Heavenly Creations,
Hidden Treasures are just some of the
phrases which have been used in the titles of
catalogues of private collections of Chinese
snuff bottles. As the titles suggest, these
miniature bottles exercise a strong fascination
for their owners. Just as their original Chinese
owners used to carry them in their pockets,
it is not unusual for contemporary owners
to carry these small treasures so that they
can display them to owners of other bottles.
Recently you may also have seen Franca
Arena displaying some of her impressive
collection on the ABC program The Collectors.
The story of Chinese snuff bottles goes back
to the late 17th and early 18th century in
A gourd shaped glass bottle with green glass stopper,
A carved agate bottle with glass stopper imitating
A limestone breccia bottle in a pebble shape with
1720-1830. Glass of realgar type with the characters Da ji
coral, Official School, 1800-1880. Carving represents the
jadeite stopper, 1750-1880. Its natural striations suggest
(together with Ping an on the reverse translated as good
Tang poet Meng Haoran riding on his mule on a moonlit
bamboo. H 6.1 cm, Mouth 0.6cm, Neck 0.7 cm. No.140 in the
luck and peace), H 7.0 cm, Mouth 0.55 cm, Neck 1.5 cm.
night followed by his servant. H 5.4 cm, Mouth 0.7 cm.,
Chester Beatty catalogue. The Trustees of the Chester
No. 186 in the Chester Beatty catalogue. The Trustees of
Neck 1.9 cm. No 91 in the Chester Beatty catalogue.
Beatty Library, Dublin
the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin
The Trustees of the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin
22
The spoon and stopper of an enamel and gold snuff bottle showing the watch that was encased on the
top with crystal or glass, made in Switzerland for the China market, 1810-1830. H 5.6 cm with stopper (4.5 cm without),
Mouth 0.9cm, Neck 1.2 cm. No 273 in the Chester Beatty catalogue. The Trustees of the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin
China when snuff was first introduced by

the Jesuits. The use of snuff rapidly became
fashionable among the elite. Inevitably, the
rituals of snuff taking reflected the high social
status of the consumers and the sumptuary
laws concerning dress and social behaviour.
To carry their snuff, the Emperors and their
followers turned not to the small boxes
common in the West but to tiny bottles that
had delicate spoons of ivory, metal and other
materials attached to their stoppers. This was
a time when the decorative arts, especially
under the Qianlong Emperor, were at a high
point of artistic development. It was natural
that the snuff bottles, which perfectly embody
the Chinese interest in miniatures, were made
using the full spectrum of available materials
and techniques: porcelain, enamel, glass, jade
and other stones, lacquer, shell, bamboo have
all been used. Many famous artists have
painted the inside of glass bottles, while
beautiful carving and inscriptions are also a
common feature.
For many collectors, the bottles provide a
window through which to enjoy the vast
spectrum of Chinese decorative arts and the
skills of Chinese craftsmen as exemplified
by their expertise in carving, painting and
using glass and porcelain to replicate jade,
quartz and other materials. Other collectors
specialise in a particular type of bottle. As a
mining engineer with an interest in minerals
and gem stones, it is not surprising that jade,
quartz and others stones are prominent in the
Chester Beatty collection. But snuff bottles
are not always serious, as several quirky
examples from the Chester Beatty collection,
including two bottles with clocks on the top
of their stoppers, show.
Art Gallery of NSW held an exhibition that

drew extensively on the bottles of a group
of Hong Kong and US collectors: Humphrey
Hui, Margaret Polak and Christopher Sin.
Coinciding with the exhibition was a seminar
that included a presentation by Terese Tse
Bartholomew from the Asian Art Museum
of San Francisco who spoke about the use of
rebuses in snuff bottles. During the exhibition
a prominent Chinese master of inside-bottle
painting, Wang Xisan, demonstrated this art.
One of the bottles he painted is now in the
Art Gallery of NSWs collection. Some snuff
bottles are also held by the Powerhouse
Museum and the National Gallery of Victoria
although they are not usually on display.
The world of Chinese snuff bottle collectors is
relatively small, just like the miniatures to which
they are addicted. Making up for their small
numbers is their enthusiasm and generosity
in sharing their knowledge with others. A
major opportunity to meet other collectors and
dealers, listen to talks and visit collections is
provided by the annual Convention of the
ICSBS, which will be held this year in October
in Hawaii. More details can be found on the
Societys website: www.snuffbottles.org
Illustrated in Neil Davey, The Hindson Coll, cat no 438
Christine Inglis is a sociologist who hasundertaken

research on overseas Chinese communities in
Southeast Asia, the Pacific and Australiaover
many years. She is currently Director of the
Multicultural & Migration Research Centre at the
University of Sydney.
REFERENCES
Michael C. Hughes, 2009. The Chester Beatty Library, Dublin:
Chinese Snuff Bottles, Baltimore, The International Chinese Snuff
R & V Tregaskis
Oriental Antiques Pty Ltd
30 years experience
by appointment only
buying & selling quality objects
expert valuations
Bottle Society, Maryland.

Humphrey Hui, Margaret Polak and Christopher C. H. Sin, 1991.
Despite their beauty, snuff bottles are rarely on

permanent display in museums in Australia
or overseas. However, with the digitisation
of collections, it is becoming easier to find
lovely examples on museum websites as
well as in auction catalogues. In 1991 the
A powerful Japanese ivory netsuke of Kwanju,

signed Tomotane; ex Peter Downey Coll, New Zealand;
Hidden Treasures of the Dragon: Chinese Snuff Bottles from the

Collections of Humphrey K. F. Hui, Margaret Polak and Christopher
C. H. Sin: a catalogue of the exhibition held at the Art Gallery
of New South Wales, 19 December 1991-27 January 1992,
Kinggraphic, Hong Kong.
Phone 9979 7162

Email rtregaskis@gmail.com
Member of the Aust Antique Dealers Assoc
Approved to Value Oriental Antiques for
the Aust Govt's Cultural Gifts Program
Therese Tse Bartholemew, 2006. Hidden Meanings in Chinese Art,

Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, San Francisco.
23
NATIONAL H E RITAG E OR INT E RNATIONAL COMMODITY ? TH E S ITUATION IN CHINA

Heritage specialist inspects looted tomb at
Philip Courtenay
Huaian City in Jiangsu Province where 300 ancient

tombs were illegally excavated in two months in 2001.
Photo courtesy Tan Changgu
he looting of and illicit trade in antiquities

is a worldwide problem, with the true
size of the international market obscured by
the privacy with which such selling takes
place. Interpol has reported that observers
commonly rank it as the third largest type
of black-market trafficking after drugs and
armaments. Estimates of the annual global
value of the trade have varied from between
US$2 and 4 billion a year to as high as US$10
billion. The Intergovernmental Committee
for Promoting the Return of Cultural
Property to its Countries of Origin or its
Restitution in Case of Illicit Appropriation,
more concisely known as The Return and
Restitution Committee, set up by Unesco in
1978, has pointed out that in addition to a
vigorous lawful trade which contributes to
the appreciation of various forms of art and
cultural expression, illicit traffic is steadily
growing internationally.
Even the cursory examination of advertisements
in art magazines and sales and auction
catalogues suggests that Chinese art pieces
and antiquities are amongst the most common
on the world market. He Shuzhong, now

Chairman of the Beijing Cultural Heritage
Protection Centre, has written that the large
scale destruction of archaeological heritage has
happened only since the establishment of the
Reform and Opening policy in 1978, and
especially during the nineties (He 2001: 19). A
Dutch study concluded that a major part of the
worlds illicit antiquities probably originates in
China (Soudijn and Tijhuis 2003: 15).
The trade finds its principal markets in Hong
Kong, London and New York with smaller
outlets in numerous Asian and Western
countries, but items are also turning up in
private art collections in major Chinese cities.
As with many other countries, poverty is
undoubtedly a major factor in the small-scale
but extensive looting of archaeological, sites.
In some of Chinas most desperately poor rural
communities, illegal excavations supplement
incomes, with chronically unemployed
farmers often achieving a years income in one
major haul from a pillaged tomb. Thefts from
museum collections and items pillaged from
underwater sites also enter the illicit trade.
As in most countries where illicit excavation

or theft is carried out, the individual small
scale operator makes less money than if
sponsored or commissioned by dealers or
collectors. Kersels (2006: 190) reports instances
in China of selling-to-order which have
involved a looter showing photographs of art
available in poorly guarded museums to a
prospective buyer, stealing the selected items,
and arranging for their transport out of China.
He Shuzhong (2001: 23) draws attention to
problems created by tourism, especially given
Ruins of the Old Summer Palace (Yuanming Yuan), Beijing. Destroyed and looted by an Anglo-French force in 1860. Photo: Michael Kan
24
Bronze head of a rabbit, Qianlong period (1786-95),

severed from a clock fountain in Beijings Old Summer
Palace in 1860. Collection Yves Saint Laurent et Pierre Berg.
CHRISTIES sale, lot 678, Paris, February 2009
the establishment of antiquities trade areas in

many cities and the difficulties faced by the
customs service in preventing illicit exports
by the large numbers of tourists.
as Chinas original proposal, which requested

import restrictions covering works of art in
virtually every medium from the Palaeolithic
era to the end of the Empire in 1911.
Tan Bee Leng, Channel Newss China

correspondent, reported in June 2005 that
over the previous five years it was believed
that more than 100,000 ancient burial grounds
in China had been looted by tomb raiders. An
earlier report, in February 2005 by Chinas
Xinhua news agency, described the discovery
by Chinese archaeologists of a 2000-yearold underground cluster of tombs at Xian
in Shaanxi Province only to find the main
chamber empty but for a pair of modern
gloves! (Tan 2005, Australian-on-line 2005).
However, comparing the illicit trade in 2006

with the peak period of smuggling between
the 1980s and the mid-1990s, Ma Weidu, owner
of Beijings first private museum, described it
as now relatively subdued and that many
copies had replaced antiquities in the market
(French 2006). This opinion is re-inforced by
the recent work of Charles Stanish of the
University of California who states generally
that many of the primary producers of objects
traded on-line have shifted from looting sites
to faking antiquities (Stanish 2009).
Since 1950 China has introduced legislation to

stem looting and the export of cultural objects.
More stringent legislation has been instituted
since 1980 with the Law on the Protection of
Cultural Heritage adopted in 1982 and amended
in 1988 and 1991. The looting and smuggling
of antiquities is now regarded as organised
crime and severe sentences, including the death
penalty, can be imposed for the destruction of
antiquities and the theft of precious cultural relics.
Beside national legislation, China is a signatory
to the various international conventions relating
to the illicit trade in antiquities. Given the
widespread looting and illicit export of cultural
relics that has occurred since 1980, China aims
specifically at the prohibition of exports of
antiquities dating from before 1795.
In parallel with these efforts to deal with the

illicit trade in cultural items, the related issue
of the return or restitution to claimant states of
cultural property has led to a continuing and
often acrimonious debate, most notably between
museum directors, collectors, and archaeologists.
To this end it has signed bilateral agreements

with a number of individual countries,
including, in January 2009 after long
negotiations, with the USA. The 2009 accord
covers antiquities dating from the Palaeolithic
period to the end of the Tang dynasty (907
CE). Nevertheless, this accord is not as broad
This debate is often expressed in terms of what

have been described as retentionism and
internationalism. Retentionism is applied to
the policies followed by increasing numbers of
countries which claim national ownership rights
over items of cultural heritage found or created,
either historically or in recent times, within their
current territorial boundaries. Internationalism,
by contrast, refers to the principle that such
items, especially those of great artistic merit,
belong to humanity as a whole and should not
be monopolised by a particular state.
citizens are introduced to, and encouraged to

engage with, cultures distant from their own in
time and space (Cuno 2008: 144).
However, given the millions of cultural items
of Chinese origin, both historical and contemporary, in collections around the world
that are available for study, there can surely
be no reasonable case for adverse criticism of
Chinas efforts to reduce, and ideally eliminate, the export of historic items, especially
when acquired illegally. Similarly, seeking
the repatriation of such items with no, or
questionable, provenance is understandable,
even if challenging.
Philip Courtenay is former Professor and Rector of
the Cairns Campus, James Cook University, with a
China is seeking repatriation of unprovenanced

items newly appearing on overseas markets,
as well as others earlier removed from its territory under unacceptable circumstances. Recent
examples of the latter are the two bronze heads
looted during the second Opium War in 1860,
when French and British troops sacked the
Old Summer Palace in Beijing, which were put
up for auction in February 2009 (Tsao: 85-6).
According to Chinese experts, there are at least
one million items of Chinese art in 200 foreign
museums spanning 47 countries that have to be
returned! (Volkskrant 2003).
There is undoubedly a strong element
of nationalistic retentionism in the current
Chinese attitude to its cultural treasures, quite
understandable in a newly emerging political
and economic power and one which is suffering considerable destruction to historic sites to
feed overseas demand. The argument supporting an internationalist approach to encyclopaedic museums (such as the British Museum
or the Art Institute of Chicago) is that, in
Cunos words, they are places where local
special interest in Southeast Asian ceramics. He is a

member of the TAASA management commmittee.
REFERENCES
Australian-on-line, 2005. China: Tomb raiders crack 2000-year-old
vault, http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/ 10 February
Cuno, James, 2008. Who Owns Antiquities? Museums and the Battle
over our Ancient Heritage, Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ.
French, Howard, 2006. Saving Chinese Artifacts: a Slow Fight,
New York Times, 1 April.
He Shuzhong, 2001. Illicit Excavation in Contemporary China, pp
19-24 in Brodie, Neil, Jennifer Doole and Colin Renfrew (eds),
Trade in Illicit Antiquities, McDonald Institute for Archaeological
Research, Cambridge.
Kersels, Morag M., 2006. From the Ground to the Buyer. A Market
Analysis of the Trade in Illegal Antiquities, pp 188-205 in Brodie
et al, op cit.
Soudijn, Melvin and Edgar Tijhuis, 2003. Some Perspectives on the
Illicit Antiquities Trade in China, Art, Antiquity and Law, 8, (2), pp 1-17.
Stanish, Charles, 2009. Forging Ahead, Archaeology, 62, 3, May/June.
Tan Bee Leng, 2005. Tomb raiders at Shaanxi Province leave little
for archaeologists,
Channel News, http://www.savingantiquities.org/Shaanxi.doc/ 15 June.
Tsao, Robert, 2009. Zodiac Heads from the Yuanmingyuan - A
Question of Taste and Value, Orientations, 40, (4), pp 85-6.
Volkskrant, 2003. China wilroofkunst terugeisen van musea, 28 January.
Ruins of the Old Summer Palace, Beijing.

Photo: Michael Kan
25
TRAV E LL E R S TAL E : A W E S T TIMOR W E DDING

Ross Langlands
Older women wearing their finest sarongs, wedding celebration at Soe, West Timor, 2008. Photo: Ross Langlands
s with most journeys to fairly remote

destinations, much time is spent sitting in
tin sheds or terminals waiting for the plane,
bus or train to arrive. I have done my fair share
of that, but impatience is always tempered by
the novices sense of anticipation! So it was
on the journey to Soe in West Timor for the
occasion of an important wedding, not in
the royal sense but to celebrate the marriage
of the eldest son of close friends Tiberius
and Imelda Leo. The ceremony was a feat of
organisation that would daunt even the most
skilful and experienced. Some 1200 people
attended over about five days with a large
contingent of local guests and others arriving
from as far afield as Europe, Singapore, USA,
China and Australia as well as the wider
Indonesian archipelago.
The bride and her family are Parisian art
dealers, the grooms a Timorese family, dealers
in textiles and tribal art with connections
throughout the world. They are a highly
respected Soe family with extended Chinese
ancestry from Hainan Island off the south
China and Vietnamese coast. Guests were met
at Kupang airport by various members of the
family with four-wheel-drives to make the
winding and arduous drive in the dark to Soe,
some 100km to the east and climbing 800m into
the southwest highlands of West Timor. It is a
cool climate with a pronounced dry season and
a region well known for its artistic creativity in
wood and stone carving and textile weaving.
Villagers and family were there to greet us
with supper on our midnight arrival.
The best hotel was sparse: iron beds with no
pillows, a thin horse hair mattress and cold
water - but as always, an excess of hospitality.
Dawn woke us, together with a cold and
constant wind from the south, uninterrupted
from the southern Australian Alps! Most
guests probably managed to splash a little
water from the trough in the hotel room
over their shivering bodies. Our little
multinational throng huddled around the
kiosk that dispensed Nescafe and condensed
milk. Mutis Peak dominates the skyline to
the north of Soe, the capital of South Central
Timor regency (Timor Tingha Selatan). Buses
and jeeps arrived and we set off down to the
wedding marquee for a breakfast of rice,
pork and vegetables.
The next day, on the eve of the wedding,
all manner of food preparations were in full
26
swing. Maybe 30 local women attended to the

vegetables, fruit and traditional sweets and
cakes, while the men tended the spit roasting.
There was the ritual slaughter of several
buffalo and at least a dozen pigs, accompanied
by continuous gong (butaki) music and ritual
dancing by meo, warriors in their full regalia.
The dance ritual was vaguely reminiscent
of an Australian corroborree, and continued
unabated throughout the day.
All tastes and creeds were catered for in
this most eclectic gathering of wedding
guests that included animists, Buddhists,
Moslems, Hindus and Christians. Family
and friends and a cast of characters from
30 years of trading were present and, of
course, the local villagers from miles around
displaying extraordinary heirloom weavings
and jewellery. For all this, it was a very
traditional Chinese wedding with Catholic
overtones. Wedding speeches were made in
English, French and Bahasa Indonesian by
a recently retired Dutch missionary with 40
years amongst the Dayak in Kalimantan, and
in Dawan (Atoni), the local language, by a
dignitary from Soe.
fat red envelopes presented to the couple.

On the day of the ceremony, both local men
and women dressed in their most important
sarongs, blankets and breast wrappers and
wore their finest hair combs, weapons and
other ritual regalia. There were several more
days of festivity, eating, drinking (involving a
little French wine) and dancing.
Knowing that planes from Kupang would be
overbooked on Sunday, we decided to make
a Saturday departure with local Bali dealer
Daeng Iskandar, touring the local villages
to visit his acquaintances. We then returned
to Kupang, Bali in a more leisurely manner,
though nevertheless exhausted, and finally
back home to Sydney.
Ross and Irene Langlands, specialist dealers in
oriental rugs and textiles and tribal art, have
operated Nomadic Rug Traders in Sydneys Pyrmont
since 1975.
The wedding outfits for the bride and groom

were western (indeed Parisian!) and the
ceremony Chinese, with gold jewellery and
P RO F IL E : J IM MA S S E LO S
Pamela Gutman
Jim took this self portrait during a brief train stop
in western India in the late 1980s
im was one of TAASAs founders, but

this is only one of his many contributions
to the study of Asian arts and cultures in
Australia and beyond. As an undergraduate in
the 1950s he read Indian history with Marjorie
Jacobs, herself instrumental in developing
Asian studies at Sydney University. Marjorie
sought to teach India in its own terms, not
as merely part of Commonwealth history as
it had been previously taught, and Jim was
to follow in her footsteps. Jim also had an
interest in film and became President of the
University of Sydney Film Group at a time
when the Satyajit Ray films were first shown
in Australia. He later became a member
of the Sydney Film Festival committee and
remembers Ray in Calcutta showing him a
preview of the film he had just finished and
laughing at his own jokes.
In 1961 the Government of India awarded
him a Commonwealth scholarship for postgraduate study at the University of Bombay
where he wrote his PhD on the beginnings of
Indian nationalism, later published as Towards
Nationalism. A wider history of the nationalist
struggle, Indian Nationalism is now in its
fifth edition. In India he was able to travel
to what were then out of the way places and
followed Indian musicians like Chattur Lal
and Ram Narayan. Here he encountered beat
poets Ginsberg and Schneider who were also
discovering Indian music. Another encounter
was with Marie Seton (who wrote Eisensteins
and then Satyajit Rays and Nehrus
biographies) and the film society movement
in India she was promoting. The Australian
artist living in Bombay, Roy Dalgarno, was
another contact and then friend.
Back in Sydney he lectured in Indian history
and was soon granted a prestigious Nuffield
Foundation Dominion Travelling Fellowship,
which took him to the School of Oriental and
African Studies in London where he studied
Marathi and was able to explore the great
holdings of the Victoria and Albert and British
Museums, as well as dealers and private
collections. He was particularly fascinated by
Indian painting, and pursued this interest on
later visits to London. After Bernard Smith
became Professor of Contemporary Art and
Director of the Power Institute of Fine Arts
at Sydney University, a fourth year Honours
course in Asian art was introduced, with Jim
teaching India, Tony Bradley China and Japan,
and Peter Worsley Indonesia.
In teaching Indian art history, Jim became

interested in using objects in terms of their
visual history, each conveying a sense of place,
culture and society. With this in mind he curated
the first of what was to be a series of influential
exhibitions on Asian Art: A Survey of Asian
Art, with Judy Birmingham, at the Fisher
Library in 1967. There followed: The GayerAnderson Collection at the AGNSW in 1978;
The Same but Different: Indian and Australian
Photographs 1850-1925 with Peter Stanbury
and Alison Lea at the Macleay Museum in 1986;
The Book in Asia in the Rare Book Library
at the University of Sydney; Indias Textile
Heritage: a Research Collection with Stuart
Norrington at the Macleay Museum in 1990 and
The Centenary Exhibition: a Hundred Years of
History at the Rare Book Library in 1991.
From this time too his involvement intensified
with the AGNSW, where his friend Jackie
Menzies, also a Sydney University graduate,
was Curator of Asian Art. Divine and Courtly
Life in Indian Painting was held there in 1991,
followed in 1997 by Dancing to the Flute,
Music and Dance in Indian Art, which he
co-curated with Jackie and Pratapaditya Pal,
and Indian Popular Painting and Textiles with
Haema Sivanesan in 2004. He was also closely
involved in the hugely successful Goddess:
Divine Energy exhibition in 2006-7, organising
a series of workshops to refine the concept and
travelling to India with Jackie to select exhibits.
Asian Studies Association and the Asian

Studies Association of Australia, for which
he produced the chapter on art studies for
the Fitzgerald Committees report on the
future of Asian studies in Australia. And his
contribution to TAASA, as a founder, longterm Committee member and supporter has
helped to make it the success it is today.
Pamela Gutman is an Honorary Associate, School of
Letters, Art & Media, University of Sydney.
Meanwhile Jim has been publishing widely,

not only on the arts of India but also its
history, politics and culture, often with special
reference to Bombay where he had learned
to love India and its people. Apart from
numerous chapters in books and articles,
some of his books include Beatos Delhi 1857,
1997 (with Narayani Gupta, Ravi Dayal
Publisher, Delhi 2000) and The City in Action.
Bombay Struggles for Power (Oxford University
Press, New Delhi 2007), and he edited and
contributed to books such as Popular Art
in Asia: the people as patrons (University of
Sydney, 1983). His Bombay Then and Now
(with Naresh Fernandes, Rolli Books, Delhi)
has just appeared, while Great Empires of Asia,
which he is editing for Thames and Hudson is
due to appear later this year.
Jim has instilled a love of India and its art
to generations of his students, and has been
a staunch advocate for South Asian Studies
in professional organisations like the South
27
R E C E NT TAA S A ACTIVITI E S
TAASA NSW
The 2009 End of Year Party took place on

9 December at the Powerhouse Museum. A
large number of TAASA members attended
for our ever popular Bazaar and an evening of
catching up and good cheer. Many members
contributed items for the Bazaar, some arriving
just as others were walking off the table, so
thanks to all those who kindly donated the
large variety of novelties and books. A number
of superb books were donated as raffle prizes.
Also thanks to the very hardworking members
of the TAASA Management Committee Judith
and Ken Rutherford (coopted as bar person
for the evening), Kate Johnston and Geraldine
Hardman in particular as they were rushed off
their feet taking payments for the Bazaar items.
TAASA Textile Study Group
The theme for the meeting held on

Wednesday 10 February was tie and dye
textiles. Christina Sumner, Principal Curator,
Design and Society, at the Powerhouse
Museum brought out a number of examples
from India and Indonesia from the Museum
collection. Members complemented these
with a dazzling array of textiles from their
own collections highlighting examples from
India, particularly textiles from the village
tradition. A video of artisans, both men and
women, demonstrating these traditional
methods of textile decoration, clearly showed
the level of skill with which these vibrant
textiles are imbued.
Examining tie and dye textiles at the TAASA Textile Study

Group meeting. L-R. Joyce Burnard, Brioni Forrest, Helen
TAA S A M E MB E R S DIARY
M ARCH M A Y 2 0 1 0
TAASA ACT EVENT
TAASA members are invited to join a

study weekend planned for Saturday
13 and Sunday 14 March in Canberra.
On Saturday, we will visit the National
Library of Australia and the National
Gallery of Australia where curators will
take the group through a selection of Asian
drawings and photographs from their
extensive collections. A talk on Persian
and Islamic calligraphy by Canberra based
Iranian artist Nasser Palangi will be held
on Sunday morning at the ANU, followed
by a visit to Humble House, Fyshwyck,
where Roger Carter will provide an
overview of traditional Chinese furniture
at his showroom. In addition, a number of
optional social events have been planned
including drinks hosted by Asia Bookroom
on Saturday evening.
A fee of $25 is payable on booking, which
does not cover travel, accommodation or
food. Participants need to make their own
travel and accommodation arrangements.
Program enquiries can be directed to HweiFen Cheah at: hwei-fen.cheah@anu.edu.au
or (02) 6125 1759. Bookings can be made by
contacting Gill Green at: gillians@ozemail.
com.au or (02) 9331 1810.
Javanese Gamelan and Chinaintroductory talk and performance

on Saturday 8 May at 12.30pm
Queensland Conservatorium,
South Bank, Brisbane
TAASA members will be given a short
talk on gamelan before joining a 40
minute performance to celebrate musical
connections between Java and China.
Performance is by the Queensland
Conservatorium Gamelan Ensemble,
made up of Conservatorium students and
members of the Indonesian community
who study and perform music from the
Central Javanese Court repertoire. They
will be directed by artist-in-residence,
Pak Joko Susilo, an internationally
renowned musician and dhalang (shadow
drama master) and will play music from
the royal courts of Solo and Jogyakarta
involving full ensemble, voice and bowed
fiddle (rebab).
There is no formal charge for the
function but TAASA members will be
asked to give a small donation to the
Conservatorium. For further details
and interest in attending please contact
Philip Courtenay on (07) 3289 5066 or at
courtenay@hotkey.net.au.
TAASA QLD
TAASA NSW
APT6 special viewing for members

Saturday 6 March
TAASA members in Queensland will be
given an introductorytalk and special
viewing of APT6 by Suhanya Raffel,
Curatorial Manager, Asia Pacific Art,
at the Queensland Art Gallery. It will
commence at 2.00 pm in the QAG
lecture theatre. Enquiries to Philip
Courtenay on (07) 3289 5066 or at
courtenay@hotkey.net.au.
TAASA Textile Study Group

The Study Group meets on the second
Wednesday of the month from 6 8 pm
at the Briefing Room, Powerhouse
Museum. For details of meetings
being held from March to May please
contact Gill Green 9331 1810 or email:
gillians@ozemail.com.au.
Congratulations to TAASA President Judith Rutherford, who has been awarded an AM in

the 2010 Australia Day honours awards. The citation reads:
For service to the community through the promotion of Asian arts and culture, the advancement
of clinical music therapy and through local government.
Perry, Sally Powell, Carole Douglas. Photo: Sandy Watson
28
W HAT S ON IN AU S TRALIA : M ARCH M A Y 2 0 1 0

A S E L E C T I V E R O U N D U P O F E XH I B I T I O N S A N D E V E N T S
Compiled by Tina Burge
AUSTRALIAN CAPITAL TERRITORY
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
held on 24 March, 7 April and 21 April from

6-7pm in the Centenary Auditorium.
See Edo City Lecture series at:www.
artgallery.nsw.gov.au for details.
Jain pilgrimage painting
Printmaking workshop
13 April at 12.45 pm
20 February 2010 from 10.15am - 4.15pm.
Lucie Folan, Curator, Asian Art, introduces

the Gallerys recently acquired early 18th
century Indian painting, which maps pilgrim
journeys to some of the most sacred sites of
the Jain religion.
Master printmaker and lecturer Andrew

Totman will guide the class through the
exhibition. Then the class will create three
plate reduction block prints with the
addition of monoprints and chine-coll.
For bookings for the lecture series and the
workshop call: (02) 9225 1878
Asian Art Events
QUEENSLAND
The 6th Asia Pacific Triennial of
Contemporary Art (APT6)
Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art
Buddhas of the past and future

25 May at 12.45 pm
Printmaking demonstration
6 & 7 March 2010 from 12 noon 4pm.
Melanie Eastburn, Curator, Asian Art,

discusses the Gallerys rare Thai temple
banner and introduces Maitreya, Buddha of
the future, and the many Buddhas of
the past.
For further information go to:nga.gov.au
Master Japanese printer Keizaburo

Matsuzaki creates ukiyo-e style prints from
woodblocks. In this demonstration, he will
produce a bijin (beautiful woman) print in
15 colours.
NEW SOUTH WALES
Floating World - 24 February - 18 April
Utamaro film series - Pictures from the

2010, Wednesdays & Sundaysat 2pm and
Hymn to beauty: the art of Utamaro
Wednesdays 7.15pm (except 7 April, 6pm).
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
This film series presents classic cinema by

some of Japans most significant directors.
For more details go to:
www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au
13 February - 2 May 2010
Already celebrated as a master of the ukiyo-e

(woodblock) print during his lifetime in late
18th century Japan, Utamaro was introduced
to the West at the turn of the 20th century as
a painter of the Green Houses (Yoshiwara
pleasure quarters). His sensuous and insightful
portraits of women from all walks of life - aloof
courtesans, diligent housewives, affectionate
mothers and passionate lovers have enjoyed
unabated popularity in Japan and worldwide.
Featuring around 80 prints from the renowned
collection of the Asian Art Museum, Berlin,
this exhibition is the first extensive survey of
Utamaros work in Australia and also includes
work by his contemporaries and followers.
Events associated with the exhibition:

Edo City: Crucible of Culture lecture series
In this three-lecture series, Professor William

H. Coaldrake introduces the high culture
of the samurai, the popular culture of the
townspeople and the influence of 19th
century Japan on the West. Lectures will be
5 December 2009 5 April 2010
The sixth exhibition in the Gallerys Asia

Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art series
occupies the entire Gallery of Modern Art
(GoMA) as well as the iconic Watermall
and adjoining galleries at the Queensland
Art Gallery (QAG). APT6 includes the work
of more than 100 artists from 25 countries,
including collaborations and collectives,
which reflect the diversity of practices a
cross Asia, the Pacific and Australia
For further information go to:
www.qag.qld.gov.au/exhibitions/current/apt6
MITSUI TRAVEL
A Gateway to Japan
Arts of Asia - Powerful Patrons

Art Gallery of New South Wales
Tuesdays at 1-2pm from
2 March 19 October 2010
Who are the outstanding individuals in

Asia who have shaped their peoples arts,
culture and sense of identity? Each lecture
in the Powerful Patrons series considers
the biography and achievements of these
cultural icons and demonstrates, through the
arts, how they encapsulate the aspirations
and ideals of a culture. Through the lens of
personality, the course will consider painting
and the decorative arts, architecture and
city building, following a trajectory from the
passions of emperors and kings to the colonial
world and the dawn of the modern era.
Details can be found at
www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/events/courses
where course bookings can also be made.
The Narrow Road to the Deep North

With cherry blossom viewing
Special departure April 9th 2010 11days
Following the footsteps of Basho

Everyday is a journey, and the journey itself home
November 2010
Autumn maple tour featuring Ukiyo-e Woodblock
Prints of everyday life of past Japan is scheduled
for mid to late November 2010.
Please call Ayako Mitsui for further discussion.
Ph 02 9232 2720 Cell 040 844 2614
Office Suite 403 / 147 King St.
Sydney 2000 Australia
Email : mitsui@mitsuitravel.com.au
Website: www.mitsuitravel.com.au
Member: IATA
Affiliate Jetset Travelworld Group Lic.2TA1537
29
SOUTH AUSTRALIA
arid interior.Cameleers assisted all major

expeditions into Australias uncharted
interior starting with the Burke and Wills
expedition in 1860 and have contributed
significantly to Australias economic and
cultural development.
www.museumvictoria.com.au/australiasmuslim-cameleers
Reflections of the Lotus: the art of Thailand,

Burma and Laos
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide
21 May 4 July 2010
Reflections of the Lotus includes 30 of

the finest pieces from the comprehensive
collection of Thai ceramics at the Art Gallery
of South Australia, displaying the brilliant
artistry and technical virtuosity of Thai
potters working in the 13th to 16th centuries.
The exhibition reveals a surprising range of
objects, from miniature lidded-boxes and
elegant pieces with luscious celadon glazes,
to ornate architectural finials featuring
legendary monsters, and sculptures created
to decorate the Buddhist temples. Amongst
them is an almost life size temple guardian,
the largest intact example of such a figure to
survive until today.
The Gallery plans to tour this exhibition
nationally in 2010 and 2011.
www.artgallery.sa.gov.au
UCHIDA Shigeru, Japanese born 1943, Tea house (Sankyo

chashitsu), 2002 (designed), 2010 (made) Japan. polyurethane
on stained Ash (Fraxinus sp.) and Oak (Quercus sp.), bamboo,
straw, 231.0 x 284.6 x 284.6 cm. Collection of Mrs Pauline
Gandel, Melbourne Shigeru Uchida
in the Asuka and Nara periods (538 - 794)

by Japanese Buddhist monks who travelled
to Tang China and returned to Japan with
tea and its utensils. However it wasnt until
the Muromachi period (1333- 1568) that
the unique Japanese aesthetic of Wabi Sabi
beauty in imperfection was developed and
culminated in the practice and teachings of
the great tea master, Sen no Rikyu during
the Momoyama period (1568-1600).
Bejah Dervish at Mullewa, WA, leaving for the Calvert

Expedition, 1896. State Library South Australia
INTERNATIONAL
CHINA
Tea and Zen will show tea utensils in

ceramics, lacquer and bamboo and also
Zen paintings and calligraphy to create a
contemplative setting evoking the spirit of
the `Way of Tea. The exhibition will include
objects from the NGVs own collection along
with objects from private collections.
Goose Kendi, c.14th century, Thailand, Sukothai Kingdom

1238-1419, Ayudhya Kingdom 1350-1767, Sawankhalok,
stoneware, green glaze, underglaze iron decoration,
29.5 cm (h), South Australian Government Grant 1974, Art
Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide
VICTORIA
The exhibition will explore the philosophical

meanings underlying the `Way of Tea in
both China and Japan and make artistic
and cultural comparisons. It will also draw
attention to the tea ceremonys continuing
practice in present day Japan and its
influence on contemporary Japanese artists
and designers, with tea utensils created by
the contemporary artist Mariko Mori and a
functioning tea house by Shigeru Uchida.
www.ngv.vic.gov.au
Tea and Zen
Australias Muslim Cameleers
National Gallery of Victoria International,
Pioneers of the Inland 1860s-1930s
Melbourne
Immigration Museum, Melbourne
15 April 29 August 2010
26 February 19 September 2010
Chinese scholars took on tea drinking as

a form of relaxation while Chinese Zen
(Chan in Chinese) Buddhist monks drank
tea to stay awake during long hours of
meditation. Tea was introduced to Japan
This exhibition of photographs reveals

the remarkable contribution that
Australias first Muslim community, from
Afghanistan and British India, made to the
exploration and settlement of Australias
30
Spring Festival Celebration for the Year

of the Tiger Contemporary Calligraphy
National Art Museum of China, Beijing
9 February 1 March 2010
The National Art Museum of China has

invited modern calligraphic artists to
respond to the celebrated tradition of
Chinese calligraphy around the theme of the
Year of the Tiger.The exhibition explores the
current place of calligraphy in contemporary
Chinese art.
www.namoc.org/en
HONG KONG
The Bei Shan Tang Legacy
Chinese University of Hong Kong Art Museum
5 September Spring 2010
Bei Shan Tang was the private studio name

of the late Dr Lee Jung Sen (1915-2007). His
extensive personal collection, donated to the
Museum over three decades and ranging
from painting, calligraphy, ink rubbings, jade
and ceramics to sculpture, scholar objects
and bronzes, is currently displayed over four
galleries of the Museum.
JAPAN
Garden of PaintingJapanese Art of the 00s
The National Museum of Art, Osaka
16 January 4 April 2010
To commemorate the fifth anniversary of

relocation from Expo Park to Nakanoshima,
in the heart of Osaka, Japanese Art of the 00s
focuses on new figurative painting from the
last decade to showcase the vibrant activities
of a younger generation of Japanese artists.
The exhibition includes over 200 works by
28 artists, including recent and new works.
www.nmao.go.jp
exhibition aims to introduce new audiences

to the ideas and art forms of contemporary
art. A stellar cast of painting, sculpture,
video, photography, performance art from
across Southeast Asia are brought together
and the whole of the museum building has
been transformed into a dramatic stage
for these stars and icons. Yet beneath the
glamour, many of the artworks ask critical
and challenging questions about society,
nation and the history of art itself.
www.singart.com
USA
SINGAPORE
Shanghai
Classic Contemporary: Contemporary
12 February 5 September 2010
Asian Art Museum, San Francisco

Southeast Asian Art from the Singapore Art
Museum Collection
Singapore Art Museum
29 January 2010 to 2 May 2010
Classic Contemporary includes some of

the Singapore Art Museums most iconic
contemporary artworks in its collection. By
playfully asking what makes a work of art
classic or contemporary or classic
contemporary this accessible and quirky
Shanghai explores the tumultuous history

of one of the worlds most dynamic and
cosmopolitan cities. This exhibition features
more than 130 oil paintings, Shanghai
Deco furniture and rugs, revolutionary
posters, works of fashion, movie clips,
and contemporary installations. They are
significant visual documents of the citys rich
and ever-changing culture.
Organising study tours since 1989.

We offer over 20 study tours each year, of which the following scheduled during
2010 and 2011 may be of interest to TAASA members.
SPRING IN THE STANS
01 14 APRIL 2010
A comprehensive tour of the great sites and cities of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan where Turkic culture
and art flourished. Visit legendary Samarkand and Bukhara, Khiva, Nukus, Merv and Mary. Tour leader
is Helen Nicholson.
Land Only per person, twin share: $6,125
JAPAN: THROUGH THE TORII GATE
05 22 APRIL 2010
Experience Japan at Cherry Blossom Time. This tour covers central and southern Japan, and includes
visits to great modern cities like Tokyo and Osaka, historic centres like Kyoto and Nara, feudal castles
like Himeji and Matsuyama, and well preserved small towns like Kanazawa and Takayama. In
conjunction with WEA and led by Simon Gentry.
Land Only price per person, twin share: $7,995
THREE ANCIENT LANDS: AZERBAIJAN, GEORGIA AND ARMENIA
16 APRIL 05 MAY 2010
The Caucasus a unique melting pot of Eastern Orthodox and Islam. From the shores of Lake Sevan,
the oil boomtown of Baku, to the lush church-studded hills of Georgia, the Caucasus is its own world.
Led by Rob Lovell.
The Asian Art Museums Shanghai

exhibition is the cornerstone of the Shanghai
Celebrationa year-long Bay Area-wide
collaboration honouring its sister city and
coinciding with the 2010 World Expo hosted
by Shanghai.
www.asianart.org
China: Impermanent Beauty 1996-97 Photographs by Ka Yeung
Crow Collection of Asian Art, Dallas
20 February 16 May, 2010
The inauguration of the newly dedicated

gallery space at the Crow Collection,
LinkAsia, will present art works that
provide a contemporary global path
to understanding Asia through unique
perspectives and mediums. The inaugural
exhibition consists of photographs by Ka
Yeung that document the Yangtze River
(Long River) before it was flooded by the
Three Gorges Dam.
www.crowcollection.com
FROM HO CHI MINH CITY TO HANOIS 1000TH BIRTHDAY

19 SEPTEMBER 11 OCTOBER
This tour usually starts with the Viet culture in the north, but this year will climax in Hanoi, for the
1000th Birthday of the city. Visit minority groups in the northern highlands, learn about the Cham
culture in Central Viet Nam and the Khmer south in the Mekong delta. Tour led by Rob Lovell.
Land Only twin share per person: $5,795
MALI AND SENEGAL
15 30 OCTOBER 2010
Home to several distinct cultures and great music, Mali also has memorable sites like Djenne, the
Niger River and Timbuktoo. You will also tour the country of the Dogon people. Senegal has a unique
eco-system owing to its position at the junction of oceanic, desert and tropical climates. It also has an
interesting colonial architectural heritage in towns like Dakar and Saint Louis. Tour leader is Ben Churcher.
LAOS
NOVEMBER 2010
Led by Gay Spies this tour takes you inside the culture of the gentle Lao and includes the annual That
Luang Festival in Vientiane, an extended stay in Luang Prabang and an overnight in a local house to
experience true Lao hospitality.
SOME OF THE TOURS SCHEDULED FOR 2011
Winter in China: Harbin, Guilin and Yunnan (NEW)
Burma with Terry Bisley (NEW)
Egypt: From Alexandria to Abu Simbel
Tunisia and Libya
Sri Lanka
Turkey: Lure of the East from Trabzon to Tarsus
Russia and the Ukraine
Mongolia, Southern Siberia and Manchuria
Iran
For a brochure on any of the above tours, or to receive our quarterly newsletter Bon Voyage, please phone:
(02) 9290 3856 or 1300 799 887 (outside Sydney metrop.), fax: (02) 9290 3857, e-mail: robl@alumnitravel.com.au; www.alumnitravel.com.au
31

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VO LU M E 1 9 N O.

THE ASIAN ARTS SOCIETY OF AUSTRALIA INC.

e di torI A L email: editorial@taasa.org.au

When the s un i s i n l i n e wi t h t he wat er b ot t l e

General editor, Josefa Green

12 An Austr alasian Cer amics M u se u m in F u p ing, C hi n a

16 The Nat Yuen Collection of Chinese Antiquities at the University of Queensland

John Fisher Printing

Published by The Asian Arts Society of Australia Inc.

18 Moving the pas t to th e p r ese nt: a Sie m Reap-A ng kor K h m e r resi de n c e

Ingo Voss, VossDesign

14 Ar tist P r ofile : Wo n- Se o k K ims Au s tr al ian B u nch e on g Wa re

Josefa Green (convenor) Tina Burge

TAASA Review is published quarterly and is distributed to members

submissions of articles, notes and reviews on Asian visual and

21 In the P ublic D o main: J apanese T r e as u r es at th e N at i on a l L i b ra ry of Aus t ra l i a

Anya Dettman with Mayumi Shinozaki

P r ec ious P layth ings in D u bl in: Snu ff bottl es in t h e C h est e r Beat t y L i b ra ry

performing arts. All articles are refereed. Additional copies and

24 Nation al Her itage o r I nte r natio nal C o mmo d ity ? T h e S i t uat i on i n C h i n a

or omit any article or advertisements submitted and require

or liabilities that may arise from material published.

indemnity from the advertisers and contributors against damages

26 T r aveller s Tal e : A Wes t T imo r We d d ing

All reasonable efforts have been made to trace copyright holders.

TAA S A M E MB E R S HIP RAT E S

P r ofile : Jim M asse lo s

28 Rec ent TAASA Activities

W hat s On: Mar ch M ay 2 0 1 0

Compiled by Tina Burge

A full In d ex of ar tic les p u bl is h e d in TAASA R e vi e w si n ce i t s b e g i n n i n g s

TAASA Review welcomes advertisements from

For further information re advertising, including

Judith Ruther for d Pr esident

Josefa Green, Editor

Collector and specialist in Chinese textiles

Art historian specialising in Cambodian culture

Former Director of the Embroiders Guild (UK)

Intellectual property lawyer with

Lecturer, Art History, Australian National University,

Visiting Professor, Department of Chinese Studies,

Study Room Co-ordinator, Art Gallery of New South

Former Professor and Rector of the Cairns Campus,

Editorial consultant with long-standing interest

General editor of TAASA Review. Collector of Chinese

The TAASA Review starts the new year with

Collector of Chinese furniture and Burmese lacquerware

Lecturer in Asian Art, Sydney University

Art consultant specialising in Chinese

Has a long association with the Art Gallery of New

Principal Curator, Design and Society,

Rosenfeld Kant and Co

Visiting Fellow in Art History, ANU;

We continue to feature Australian collections

Curator of Southeast Asian Art and Material Culture,

Head of Asian and Pacific Art, Queensland Art Gallery

Curator of Asian Art, Art Gallery of South Australia

The work of Korean Australian ceramic artist

Curator Asian Art, National Gallery of Victoria International

Lecturer in Asian History, School of History and Classics,

In contrast, Janet Mansfield describes how,

Australasian Museum in the town of Fuping