Catalog (55)

From our Southeast Asia Collection, a very fine 19th century Thai Rattanakosin bronze Buddha exhibiting the rarely seen Pang Ham Phra Kaen Chan mudra, also known as the "Stopping the Sandalwood Image" mudra. This Buddha is especially well-cast with sharp details. It has just the right balance of wear commensurate with age combined with a good amount of retained original gilding, ultimately giving the piece its undeniable air of age and authenticity.

As stated above, this particular mu...

From our Southeast Asia Collection, a good contemporary nephrite jade carving of a mother elephant with her infant. Sourced directly from the Chiang Mai region of Thailand in the early 1990's, the jade is a very deep emerald green color, somewhat darker than the website photos which seem to have lightened the jade color due to the flash. A small but charming piece with an endearing subject matter, nicely carved with good weight and heft, and overall an attractive genuine example of Northern Thai...

From our Southeast Asia Collection, a lovely handmade silk on cotton vintage table runner from Laos, using tan colored silk woven into geometric designs with magenta and blue/green colored accents. The runner is shown only half size as we have folded it to fit within the confines of our display boards, but it is actually quite long and very well-suited for long dinner tables or sideboards. It can also be displayed either framed or unframed as a wall hanging. Acquired in the late 1980's, we can b...

From our Southeast Asia Collection, a very fine gilded Burmese hsun-ok or offering vessel, late 19th to early 20th century. Gilded offering vessels such as this present example would have been owned by wealthy Burmese families, and used exclusively for bringing food gifts to the monastery. They are constructed of bamboo and turned wood bodies, and decorated with scrolling floral designs called "chupan." Crafting the chupan design is actually a deceptively meticulous and laborious process, one t...

From our Southeast Asia Collection, an original and signed oil painting from Inle Lake, Burma. The piece depicts two men boating along a marsh with a wonderful view of some communal structures fronting a stunning mountainside. For those who have been fortunate to travel to the Inle Lake area, this certainly brings back memories. And for those who have never been, this painting makes you want to go.

Executed in an unusual color palette of straw, yellow, green, brown, taupe, orange, and ...

From our Southeast Asia Collection, a fine and complete Burmese Kammavaca Manuscript, late 19th - early 20th century, containing all 16 leaves and the original teak wood covers.

Kammavaca manuscripts are a quintessentially Burmese artifact that reflect the general reverence afforded to the monastic system in that country. To Western eyes, they are usually just highly decorative ethnic handicrafts from an isolated and exotic culture. But to the Burmese, they are a rather important and quit...

From our Southeast Asia Collection, a good Thai repousse silver box with burlwood lining, depicting the Thai and Burmese kings in battle during the sixteenth century. Sourced directly from Chiang Mai Thailand in 1990, this is a substantial box of good quality silver. The exterior has been allowed to patinate for 20 years and has taken on the usual dark grey patina typical for sterling silver, but the interior is completely pristine as it has never actually been used. A new owner may prefer to ...

From our Southeast Asia Collection, a contemporary but very beautiful Burmese shwei-zawa wall hanging from Pagan, Burma, executed in brilliant gold leaf against a shiny black lacquer ground. The scene depicted is most likely something from the Jataka Tales (the stories of the previous lives of the Buddha), though we are not positive which exact scene is being portrayed. Nevertheless, this is a very fine and strikingly attractive example, and for those who understand how shwei-zawa work is crea...

Additional photos for 19th Century Burmese Silver Alms-Style Bowl, Item # 941901.

From our Southeast Asia Collection, a very fine Burmese silver alms-style bowl, late 19th century, extremely well-executed in deep repousse technique with a continuous scene of thirteen figures depicting an episode from the Burmese Jataka Tales (previous lives of the Buddha), bordered on top by a row of maw-pan floral scrolls incorporating seven chin-thei (Burmese buddhist lions), and bordered on the bottom by a row of stylized acanthus leaves.

Despite the continued political and economic...

From our Southeast Asia Collection, a superb original and signed acrylic painting on canvas depicting an Indonesian Barong Dance, deaccessioned from the Agung Rai Museum in Ubud, Bali in 1997.

The Barong Dance is one of those wonderful and almost magical expressions of Indonesian mythology, where themes of good and evil are pitted against one another through a cultural tale played out as a dance. According to the tale, an evil sorceress named Rangda summons her army to go after Erlangga, ...

From our Southeast Asia Collection, a stunning and large martaban-type lacquer jar from the famed U Aung Myint workshop in Myinkaba Village, Pagan Burma (Myanmar), from which the British Museum has commissioned pieces for display in London. See Isaacs and Burton, Visions from the Golden Land, Burma and the Art of Lacquer page 222-223. We had the honor, privilege, and education of watching artisans in this famous lacquer workshop creating modern masterpieces in the yun style, an extremely labor i...

From our Southeast Asia Collection, a vibrant and highly decorative Indonesian batik in the form of a village scene with figures, from Yogyjakarta (Indonesia), executed in rich turquoise, black, brown, straw color, and other earth tones, and signed by the artist.

Batik is one of many methodologies of fabric decoration employed in Indonesia's long and rich textile tradition. Those unfamiliar with the process will not immediately recognize how the designs are rendered, but it is essentially ...

From our Southeast Asia Collection, a large and very attractive Indonesian tribal mask, crafted from a dark hardwood we think is either teak or some other rosewood variant, inlaid with mother of pearl or shell. They craft a lot of masks in different versions in Bali, but the more frequently encountered version you see there is a much smaller but heavily painted multicolor style, that we tend to find a bit gaudy. We selected this style from Central Java for its austere but artful presence, achiev...

From our Southeast Asia Collection, an extremely fine and very attractive dome-shaped, two-piece lacquerware box from the famed U Aung Myint workshop in Myinkaba Village, Pagan Burma (Myanmar), from which the British Museum has commissioned pieces for display in London. See Isaacs and Burton, Visions from the Golden Land, Burma and the Art of Lacquer page 222-223. We had the honor, privilege, and education of watching artisans in this famous lacquer workshop creating modern masterpieces in the y...

From our Southeast Asia Collection, a very attractive 5 piece Pagan-style lacquer hsun-ok (offering vessel) from the famed U Aung Myint workshop in Myinkaba Village, Pagan Burma (Myanmar), from which the British Museum has commissioned pieces for display in London. See Isaacs and Burton, Visions from the Golden Land, Burma and the Art of Lacquer page 222-223. We had the honor, privilege, and education of watching artisans in this famous lacquer workshop creating modern masterpieces in the yun st...

From our Southeast Asia Collection, a very striking contemporary Burmese writing box done in the "shwei-zawa" technique, with gold leaf floral designs known as "chupan" set against a shiny black lacquer ground, all done to very striking and dramatic effect. For those unfamiliar with this ancient Southeast Asian craft that began with the Thai in the seventeenth century, and is still practiced today mainly by the Burmese, Sylvia Fraser -Lu gives a simplified but useful explanation in Burmese Craft...

A very good late 19th - early 20th century Tibetan ewer, crafted of thin, hand-worked sheets of what is probably some type of brass/bronze amalgam that has acquired a rich chocolate patina over time, with deep repousse and chasing techniques forming the decorative bands along the shoulder, neck, and lid of vessel, a well-formed makara shaped spout and handle, all atop a splayed footed base. Overall a very nice example with legitimate age, good presence, and very decorative.

Size and Condi...