Making the Connection: from Maharaja to Manjusha

Bay Area jewelry designer Jyotsna Singh is the granddaughter of Maharaja Bhupinder Singh of Patiala, whose extraordinary Cartier necklace is one of the stand-out pieces in our exhibition, Maharaja: The Splendor of India’s Royal Courts. We’re thrilled to be able to cement the family connection by offering some of Jyotsna’s Manjusha jewelry line in our store.

Manjusha, which means a treasure chest of jewels, presents collections of unique fusion jewelry that combine the majesty of the old with the intensity of the new.  Inspired by the beauty of royal Jadau designs, Jyotsna’s jewelry is reminiscent of a bygone era of royal palaces and princely extravagance.

Here, Jyotsna talks about her special relationship with jewelry and the experience of seeing her grandfather’s necklace for the first time.

Brand new, you’re retro

I’ve an admission to make: I’ve been playing a little game, waiting for someone to call me out on the fact that I’ve placed a book of 17th century paintings in a section reserved for contemporary South Asian art.  But you’ve got to admit: on the surface, it’s not an easy call.

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I Wayan Wija

Although you might guess that things around the Museum are winding down–we’ve less than a month of the Bali exhibition left–think again.

The rare opportunity to see noted puppet master I Wayan Wija brings an added benefit: Wija has brought a number of his puppets and miniatures, several of which will be available in the Museum Store through his Asia Alive residency, which runs until August 28th.

Current favorites include the frogs and lion (with wagging tail), and quite a few of the miniatures, which are essentially small, unmounted paintings done in the style of the wayang (puppets).

Ratih, the Balinese goddess of romantic love, lust, & everlasting pleasure

And then there’s my personal favorite:

If you can’t make one of the performances or talks, stop by the Museum Store to see the work of one of the world’s greatest living masters.

Language of Cloth: Behind the Scenes

When someone mentions Bali and Java, what do you see?  Some speak of impossibly verdant jungle broken by blue expanses of sea and sky, sharp-toothed deities in wood and stone, dancers dripping with gold ornament, the press of tourists.

Perhaps because I have never visited Indonesia, I tend to think of its art and craft, the dislocated souvenirs of Paradise.  Like the pieces on view in the galleries, they’re my link to places I may never visit, and so become microcosms of a word-of-mouth world.  But there’s one thing I don’t need imagination for, and that’s batik.

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Vestiges of a Process: Shanghai Shikumen

We get a lot of crazy questions in the museum store, like “How much is that?”  Ordinarily  this is not an unusual question, given the nature of our endeavors, but in this instance patrons are pointing out Jian-Jun Zhang’s installation, Vestiges of a Process: Shanghai Garden.

Even those who don’t follow the art market know that major Chinese contemporary art is priced out of the the means of most apartment-dwelling San Franciscans, so the question “How much is it?” is a question not asked casually.

tilt-shifting courtesy of TC

If you’ve seen the Shanghai exhibition, Zhang’s work is the one comprised of bricks from dismantled shikumen, as well as life-sized silicon rubber scholar’s rocks and an unsettlingly flesh-hued vessel.  For those of you who require a little more  background, see this earlier post.

Happy news for those of us who like to buy art and afford lunch, as Zhang has proven in a multiple charting the disappearance of old Shanghai.  His Vestiges of a Process: Shanghai Shikumen, consists of an enevelope of nine photographs of the rapidly disintegrating past and a wee paper boat to help you travel the waters of memory.  Both the folded boat and envelope are fashioned out of a painted composite map of Shanghai showing the restlessness of the landscape.  The best part?  This artist’s work is $15.

(very not-to-scale)

There’s little chance that I’ll ever be able to buy anything that we exhibit in the museum–minus what’s in the museum store.  I’ll take what I can get, until someone wants to gift me one of the great rubber scholars rocks.

Notable Books Asia: 2009

Considering that books are such a large part of my job, I shouldn’t find questions like “Is this book any good?” complicated.  I won’t lie to you: if I don’t like a book, I’ll tell you (sorry, capitalism).  Ultimately it’s more important to find out whether or not you like a book for yourself.  You’d think a bookseller would tell you that there are no  bad books, but unfortunately, I have my standards. The best way to tell if a book is worth it?  Start reading.

That said, I would like to break with all my usual feelings about “best-of” lists and provide for you…a best-of list.  Word on the street is that it’s going to be one cold winter, and you know that you can’t spend that much time on Facebook…
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welcome our fuzzy overlords

Did I say something in that last post about snow lions?

This Friday and Saturday, November 20-21, the Asian Art Museum Store is honored to host a trunk show featuring work from the Tibet Artisan Initiative and Dropenling Handicraft Center.

There is much more to be seen: supple leatherwork, traditional weavings, painted wood, jewelry, dolls and yaks, all of it fascinating work produced by artisans in Tibet in order to keep the folkways alive…but as you can see, I only have eyes for the felted wool cats.  Will someone please help me make up my mind?  Tiger or snow lion?

thank you for your support

In San Francisco, we’re used to hearing certain turns of phrase, perhaps to a point of weariness.  “Local-sustainable-organic” gets bandied about so much that a candle I just purchased advertises the appeal on its (post-consumerist) packaging.  But as fickle as we are, every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and sometimes we simply tire of plotting out our every civic-minded detail.

But there’s one point on which I won’t budge, especially given the alarming content of this article in the Guardian UK.

Many people forget that the Museum Store is also an independent bookstore.  We sell everything from postcards on up to Qing-era architectural carvings, with a lot of curious objects in between.  I’ll likely be writing about felted wool Tibetan Snow Lions and our squishy Ganesha later this week, but a goodly amount of our square footage is given over to bookshelves which I painstakingly try to keep in OCD/Library of Congress-style order.
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Fidelity in Revenge

Mase Chudayu Masa-aki takes aim

What great tale that comes to us through the fogged lens of history has not been inflated, top-heavy with embellishment? The Chushingura—the “Treasury of Loyal Retainers”—is perhaps the most famous of samurai narratives and requires no exaggeration.
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Sneaking a Peek…

Big, mysterious boxes are showing up with greater frequency in the Museum Store’s underground lair (stockroom just doesn’t have the right ring to it, no?). I tend to take special notice if there’s a publisher’s name on the box, but I was assured that a recent shipment held something truly special.

I was not disappointed:

floaties

These shiny glass balls are Japanese floats, used to keep nets aloft in the ocean. I grew up with a few in my backyard as a kid and have always wondered where they went (um, dog + kids + glass = ? ).

I’m not immune from a love of old things from Japan, so I’m likely going to be bringing some home.

While I don’t want to totally ruin the surprise–our visual merchandiser and buyers change the aesthetic of the Museum Store to compliment special exhibitions–just know that things around here are going to be good.

I can hardly wait for the handmade Japanese swords to get here! And yes, this exhibition is making me even geekier than normal.