Bali Goes to Bollywood: We’re in VERVE Magazine!
Nice feature in Mumbai’s VERVE magazine on “Bali’s Haute Brigade,” which includes yours truly, Susi Johnston. The article, written by a diligent and insightful journalist, Sitanshi Talati-Parikh, gives a fresh perspective on this fabled island, which is certainly more interesting and accurate than any travel brochure or press kit hyperbole ever could be. I was pleased to see the image they included (above) of some of Macan Tidur’s treasures. It occurs to me now that the pieces in the photo evidence even more than most, the Indian influence on Indonesian textiles and ornament. Nice. Very nice. Thanks VERVE, thanks Sitanshi!
Arts of Ancient Viet Nam Coming to Houston
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and Asia Society, New York, offer an unprecedented exhibition of art from ancient Viet Nam—the first U.S. exhibition to address in depth the historical, geographic and cultural contexts of precolonial Vietnamese art. Arts of Ancient Viet Nam: From River Plain to Open Sea will expose approximately 110 objects dating from the first millennium B.C. through the 17th century, on loan from Viet Nam´s leading museums.
Highlights of the exhibition include ritual bronzes, terracotta burial wares, fine gold jewelry, Hindu and Buddhist sculptures, and ornaments of jade, lapis lazuli, crystal and carnelian. The works have never before been exhibited.
The exhibition runs 13 September 2009 to 2 January 2010, and afterwards travels to the Asia Society in New York. While we wait for September, let’s all read the book behind the exhibition, by its chief curator Nancy Tingley, with Andreas Reinecke, Pierre-Yves Manguin, Kerry Nguyen-Long and Nguyen Dinh Chien (in stock at amazon.com now).
Custom Furniture: 90% Perspiration
Last week was spent with two designers from Douglas Durkin Design, Greg Elich and Andrew Horn. They were in Bali with me to work on a collection of extraordinary custom furniture for a residence in Hawaii.
For those of you who might imagine that creating high-end custom furniture is pure glamour, just have a look “backstage” at the process of design refinement. We spent hours and hours each day in the workshop, a fascinating place, but very dusty, and very, very hot and humid. And lo! Wonder of wonders! A furniture workshop normally has almost no furniture suited to comfortable sitting, so we perched and paced and mopped the sweat from our brows, all the while utterly absorbed with the work at hand.
Textilians Take Note: Adiwastra Exhibition Jakarta April 15 – 19
The textile traditions of Indonesia are no longer ethnographic curiosities. They are the material of couture creations that can take you from the beach to the ballroom and out on the streets of the world’s culture capitals in capital style.
Not convinced? Just take a look at the chic ikat resort wear, above, created by Ratna Panggabean, one of the country’s most prestigious fashion designers and an outspoken evangelist for Indonesian textile arts.
Then visit the annual exhibition of Adiwastra Nusantara, an organisation devoted to exposing and promoting the traditional textile techniques of the Indonesian archipelago. This year’s show is entitled “Beyond Fashion! Art to Wear” and will take place 15 – 19 April at the National Convention Centre in Jakarta.