Jeepers Creepers, Where’d You Get Those…

A journalist asked us today about the enamel eyes sported by our Vishnu and Lakshmi sculpture in Sanjay Patel’s Deities, Demons and Dudes with ‘Staches.

One of our conservators with some ready-made enamel eyes.

This sculpture was originally intended to have eyes like these. There are carved depressions in the stone for them, as you can see from the picture below. We don’t know whether the sculpture never got its eyes, or lost them at some point.  Years ago we made a mold of the eye depressions, and I gave the mold to an artisan in India who makes such eyes. The artisan then created a pair for us from enameled metal, as is traditional.

Vishnu and Lakshmi in their former, eyeless state.

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Striving for number one

The number two best seller at Asia Books in Bangkok’s international airport is the Asian Art Museum’s Emerald Cities: Arts of Siam and Burma 1775-1950. We’ll keep working to get the top spot!

Avatar at the Asian, part II

Having now seen the movie Avatar, I can’t say there’s much Hindu lore in it beyond the word “avatar” and an approximation of its ancient concept.

It’s true that the hero of Avatar, like the Hindu deity Vishnu, has blue skin and rides a mighty sun bird, but hey, we’re in the realm of myth, and X doesn’t have to be derived from Y.

Here’s a painting from the museum’s collection showing a very blue Vishnu (and his consort) riding through the sky on the great bird Garuda. It’s from the north Indian state of Rajasthan, and dates from around 1760.

If you see the movie and notice other connections with Hindu lore, write in and tell us, OK?

Avatar at the Asian

There you go again, Hollywood, stealing from ancient Hindu lore.

The word “avatar” comes from Sanskrit avatara, literally meaning “descent.” It referred, originally, to the incarnations of the great deity Vishnu. When humankind was threatened with disorder and violence Vishnu would take on an appropriate form and descend to earth to set things right.

There are usually thought to be ten incarnations, and they include animal or part-animal forms such as The Tortoise and The Man-Lion, and human forms such as The Dwarf, Rama, and Krishna.

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Space Aliens Invade Emerald Cities

No, actually it is contract conservator Emy Kim finishing the cleaning and consolidation of the surface of an elaborately lacquered, gilded, and inlaid table from nineteenth-century Siam that will be on view in the Emerald Cities exhibition.

She wears a respirator for protection from the fumes from solvents used in the cleaning.

Emerald Blooper

Nightmare: you are looking at the final, too-late-to-change proofs of a book you are responsible for, and notice a glaring mistake.

On page 21 of our soon-to-be-released publication Emerald Cities, Arts of Siam and Burma, 1775-1950, there’s a photo of one of Thailand’s most important  temples. The only problem is, the photo is of the wrong building.

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Inscription Found

Shiho Sasaki holding a Siamese painting. She discovered a faint inscription, which extends between her hands in this photo.

The sorts of Siamese and Burmese artworks that will be shown in our Emerald Cities exhibition seldom have inscriptions or other documentary evidence associated with them. This makes research particularly challenging. When an inscription turns up, it’s exciting.

Our conservator of paintings Shiho Sasaki phoned me this morning to say she had found a previously unnoticed inscription on one of the Siamese paintings she is preparing for display.

The one-and-a-half-line inscription on the back of the painting is very faint and so far hasn’t been read. The few words that can be made out suggest that the inscription records donors’ names and their pious intentions.

Next steps are to ask our photographer to take detailed shots under optimal lighting conditions, and to ask the conservators to try infrared photography, which sometimes reveals what cannot be seen in ordinary light.

Thanks go to Shiho for her careful, sharp looking.

Rocking Bangkok

The full name of Bangkok, the capital of Thailand, is sometimes said to be the longest place name in the world. (Apparently there’s a competitor in Wales.)

A good way to hear the full name is to check out this video.

It’s a 1989 rock song by the Thai group Asanee-Wasan in which the full name of Bangkok is repeated several times. There’s great footage of Bangkok through the decades.
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“Phai Thai,” chai mai? (“ไผ่ไทย” ใช่ไหม?)

Transcribing one language into the writing system of another is notoriously hard. Getting Thai into the Roman alphabet is a bear.

I made up an unlikely phrase to show some of the problems. “Phai Thai,” chai mai? would mean something like “You said ‘Thai bamboo,’ right?” It might conceivably come up in a conversation in which one person didn’t quite hear the other, or couldn’t quite make out a foreigner’s pronunciation. (Also, unless the people were good friends in an informal setting, the speaker would add some sort of courtesy word at the end.)
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Phitsa, Kof, Khomphiotoe, and Other Thai Words You Already Know

OK, maybe the loan words for pizza, golf, and computer are too easy. (To get the last one, dividing the syllables may help: khom-phio-toe.)

Many of us these days know some other Thai words. Travelers may have mastered mai pen rai (“never mind,” “don’t worry about it”), always a handy phrase to have around.

Then there’s the Thai restaurant staple phat thai (which sometimes turns up on menus in nonstandard forms like pad thai, presumably out of fear that Americans will pronounce phat like “fat” rather than “pot.”)
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