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.

You’d be forgiven for imagining the cover of Tantra Song a study on Ellsworth Kelly’s Stele I, pictured here in SFMoMA’s rooftop garden.

Or perhaps that the above painting recalls Kazimir Malevich or El Lissitzky, two great Suprematist artists of the early 20th century Soviet avant-garde.

Happening upon the paintings in 1970s Paris, the French poet Franck André Jamme was moved to discover their origin.  So inspired was he by the fact that these paintings contained the freshness and composition of 20th century work, he traveled to Rajasthan to study their origin (with disastrous results).

Art history is littered with such stories of accident and chance, of artists from disparate cultures finding reference and inspiration.  Tantra Song does what my favorite kinds of books do, drawing together two distinct traditions, affirming that the walls between worlds are far more permeable than we imagine them.
It’s the “two great tastes that taste great together” school, and lest you think this is scholarly stuff, the publisher, Siglio, points out that the book possesses some rather serious popular appeal.

You can read more over at Maria Popova’s addictive culture blog, Brain Pickings, or drop by the museum store to take a look at the book and talk French poetry–and yes, I do have the best job in the world.

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.

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.

One begins by drawing on silk or cotton with wax, and then dying the fabric.  You draw again, and dye again, creating another layer of ornament and color, picking up where the last design left off, incorporating new motifs and textures.
Like a lot of us around here, I like to DIY (or rather, Do It Myself), and I taught myself how to batik with both cap and tulis.  The block that you see above is a cap, or batik stamp.  This contrasts with the technique of tulis, literally meaning “written.”

Of course, saying I’ve done batik is a little like saying “I know how to cook,” which should not imply that I’m French Laundry caliber.  Although it was fun (and messy), I never got anywhere near the level of skill of the Language of Cloth artists, whose work will be available for purchase at the Museum Store’s July 15th & 16th trunk show.

Although ostensibly the owner of Language of Cloth, Daniel Gundlach is an artist in his own right, collaborating with batik artists, innovating and riffing on traditional techniques and blurring the line between craft and art.  We received word that he’s put together what he considers his finest collection of batik for the trunk show, including both cap-printed and tulis cloth.

A substantial component of the work we do with artists and vendors involves translating the stories of people, places, and art; with the pictures that Daniel has sent us, we can show you another facet of this world.

"With Asif in Pekalongan, I collaborated on a series of scarf designs that use his extensive collection of cap on habutai silk. I hope these can be offered at a price that will make them especially attractive."

"Bowo in Cirebon specializes in batik dongeng (story batik) and is working on a batik depicting the plight of the oceans."

" Hartono, whose work you have in the store already, has produced a number of beautiful shawls on a lovely raw silk from Cambodia, and is still working on another collection of new scarf designs."

To learn the full story, you won’t want to miss this event.  And for those who prefer silver to silk, Joshua Smith will be in attendance with his Indiri Colection of modern Balinese jewelry.

Trunk Show and Sale: Hand-Drawn Batik from Java, Sterling Silver Jewelry from Bali
Friday, July 15 & Saturday, July 16
10:00 am – 5:00 pm
Classroom
Free admission

For more information and to get a sneak peek at additional images, visit the Museum Store’s events page.

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.

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…

Todd Shimoda: Oh! A mystery of ‘mono no aware’

The Hawaii-based  Shimoda teases an engaging novel from the hard-to-translate concept of mono no aware.  I would poorly translate mono no aware as that feeling one gets upon experiencing the passing beauty of transitory things.  On the obvious end of the mono no aware spectrograph, one finds cherry blossoms and autumn leaves.  For the misanthropic urban dweller such as myself, the sight of the freshly-trimmed trees in Civic Center (which render them nubby, alien plantlife) represent my “Oh!” moment.

farewell!

Why it’s worth it: The Seattle publisher Chin Music Press is also responsible for one of my favorite collections, Kuhaku (2004).  All of their books are works of art: from the quality of the binding to the illustrations (by Linda Shimoda), Oh! is a book you’ll want to give as a gift, and then immediately borrow.

For fans of anything McSweeney’s or the Japanese diaspora.

Gilles Béguin: Buddhist Art: An Historical and Cultural Journey

What sets this book apart from a spate of recent Buddhist surveys is the incredible scope of the French scholar’s newest work: 680 color illustrations, 22 maps and 78 plans bind Asia together in a historical atlas that is at once scholarly and yet approachable.

Why it’s worth it: While the incredible number of pictures means you don’t have to read a word, Béguin is an expert in Asian art and chief conservator of the Cernuschi Museum, Paris.

For those who spurn insubstantial coffee table books but love a big, shiny picture.

Eileen Yin-Fei Lo: Mastering the Art of Chinese Cooking

Probably the book I would most likely buy right now if I weren’t a vegetarian (and probably a book I will buy as a gift for my non-vegetarians), this represents another win from the accomplished chef and author.  Lovingly shot by Susie Cushner, the book demystifies Chinese cuisine  but doesn’t dumb it down.

Why it’s worth it: The book highlights a wide variety of Chinese regional dishes.  And you’re hungry.

For those who love food and/or love to read about food…so, most of San Francisco.

Patricia Tanumihardja: The Asian Grandmother’s Cookbook: Home Cooking from Asian American Kitchens

When our buyer put this on my desk it took all of a second for me to say yesyesyes.  Grandmothers.  Cookbook.  What more do you need?   Well, design-wise it’s probably one of my new favorites: lovely close-ups of patterns are interspersed throughout, recalling wallpaper and grandmotherly housedresses (or sari, or baro’t saya, or kimono).  The recipes are the real thing, but what really got me were the “Profiles of a Grandma,” in which the history of each extraordinary woman is told.

Why it’s worth it: Face it: food made by grandmas just tastes better.

For those who know that the secret to good food is love.

Victor Mair & Erling Hoh: The True History of Tea

In the last few years, I can count nearly ten new books on tea and tea culture (and that’s just what we’ve carried).  But few have come close to this most recent entry into the canon.  Mair, a China scholar, sorts apocrypha from truth and spins an engaging yarn.

Why it’s worth it: The history of tea is the history of  culture, trade, and war.

For polymaths and caffeine junkies.

Jaden Hair: The Steamy Kitchen Cookbook

Sorry, just one more cookbook.  I had to mention this one because it’s just so…easy-going.  The tone may put off some seasoned home chefs (hello, Food Network), but the idea behind the book –”101 Asian recipes simple enough for tonight’s dinner”–will appeal to those who aren’t up to a lot of prep time.   I’m liking every cookbook that Tuttle has put out recently, and this is no exception.

Why it’s worth it: Because you can’t spend every night cooking for three hours.

For those in search of an unpretentious guide to Asian cookery.

Salima Hashmi: Hanging Fire: Contemporary Art From Pakistan

Asia Society’s catalog for the first large-scale exhibition of Pakistani art in the U.S. treads neatly along the lines of message and media.  Ultimately, we are won over by the artists’ skill and wit.  There’s an especially strong showing of Pakistan’s women in the show, recalling that Pakistan’s Fahmida Mirza was the first woman in the Muslim world elected to be a speaker of Parliament.

Why it’s worth it: If everything you think you know about Pakistan has been informed by war, it’s time to see another side.

For the art lover who welcomes the challenge of new perspectives.

M.L. Pattaratorn Chirapravati & Forrest McGill: Emerald Cities: Arts of Siam and Burma 1775-1950

Hello, nepotism.  But seriously, I won’t recommend a bad book, and this book does what no other has done before.    Representative of a tremendous effort in both scholarship and conservation, this catalog also features the sumptuous photography of Kaz Tsuruta.

Why it’s worth it: When was the last time you were able to explain the complex relationship between Burma and the old kingdom of Siam?

For lovers of Southeast Asian art or those looking for something a little different.

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?

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.

We can’t carry every book, and we can’t carry so many volumes as to always have 1400-plus titles in stock.  However, we have a fairly representative sampling of books in print that are in some manner or other related to Asian art and culture.

I’d love to have bigger literature sections so that I could feel guilty about how little I get to read nowadays; I’d like to have more of those impossible-to-find books that trigger looks of wonder on people’s faces; I’d definitely make up for this city’s sorry magazine stand situation by carrying more periodicals.  Currently we stock the two major “collector” mags Arts of Asia and Orientations, and we seem to be the only U.S. West Coast source of the Contemporary Chinese art journal, Yishu.

My wish list is actually longer, and includes the fervent hope that we get called a Museum Store and not a gift shop (the joke is that the latter sells batteries and Buddha shotglasses).

But my biggest and most feasible wish?  That I don’t hear anyone say “you can get it online for less.”  At the risk of sounding like a curmudgeonly bookseller (not a redundancy), I might mention that instead of buying online, patrons can return to access the Museum Store without paying admission.  If they’re from out of town, I will encourage them to visit their local bookstore.  I’m afraid to mention how many times I hear them reply that where they come from, there are no bookstores–as chilling a phrase as any.  A quick search on the Indiebound website shows that the Bay Area isn’t faring too badly, but showing your local bookstore a little extra love might be in order given the latest economic trends.

At the risk of making you consider yet one more way to stay local, think about what people who run bookstores do.  The books don’t show up on their own: there’s a lot of work that goes into researching and sourcing books.  There are three of us who, every book season, pore over hundreds of catalogs, sometimes finding only one book per massive catalog.  This is not to say the least of actually processing them.  I don’t recommend that you challenge booksellers to arm-wrestling matches: we may seem a gentle and intelligent lot, but lifting books on Mughal architecture can give one a powerful physique.  I’d never use my powers for anything but good, and I do that by making sure that I’m around for you to talk books: while I haven’t read every book, I’ve read a few of them, and it’s my job to know what we have and where to find it.

The other detail I’ll remind you about is that the proceeds from the store’s sales go right back to the museum to pay for our public programs and exhibitions.  We have a ridiculously small staff, so we’re giving as much as we can.  At the risk of sounding like member drives on PBS, take a minute and think about what museums mean to you.  And if you don’t buy from us, please, please, please, find a little bookstore near you that you’d like to be around in ten years’ time.  Tell them I said hello.

Thanks for forgiving my polite rant.  I’ll go back to prattling on about politics, arts, and crafts soon enough.

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.

In 1701, a young nobleman named Asano Naganori was slighted by an older nobleman named Kira Yoshinaka. It is impossible to say whether the quarrel began because Asano did not offer Kira a sufficient bribe or gift for teaching him court etiquette—perhaps the younger nobleman was offended by what he considered a corruption of Confucian ideals. Whatever the case, Asano struck Kira and wounded him on the forehead for his rudeness. It was well-known that it was a capital offense to draw a weapon within the Shogun’s palace and a harsh punishment was handed down: Asano would be forced to commit seppuku. Despite entreaties from those familiar with the two men (and the consensus that Kira probably deserved the comeuppance), the sentence stood. In holding with the conventions of the Tokugawa shogunate, the lands of Asano’s clan were dissolved after his death, and his retainers cast out as ronin, or “wave men.” One of the men, the sharp-witted Oishi Kuranosuke, gathered 46 of the retainers and agreed that they would not act hastily, but instead wait until they were assured victory. Many became tradesmen and monks, and in the case of Oishi, a convincing drunkard. The ruse worked: Kira’s spies reported that Asano’s men were not strong enough to take the expected action. But on a snowy night at the end of 1702, they took their vengeance, as well as Kira’s head, presenting it to their master’s grave in a final act of fealty. Upon turning themselves over to government officials, the men were afforded the final honor of committing seppuku as samurai rather than being condemned to execution as prisoners. Dramatic and literary versions of the Chushingura began to appear almost immediately after the men’s deaths in 1703. Bunraku and kabuki productions were extraordinarily popular, and the first silent films appeared with the advent of the medium in the early 20th century. Mizoguchi Kenji made his version of the story as a morale-booster in 1941 at the behest of the Japanese government. Inagaki Hiroshi (having made his trilogy of films on Miyamoto Musashi with Mifune Toshiro in the 50s) came out with his Chushingura in 1962. Keanu Reeves is linked with a production of The 47 Ronin slated for release in 2012. Artists were not immune from the draw of the tale. One of the great woodblock artists of the 19th century, Kuniyoshi Utagawa, revisited the series no less than eight times. Masterful in composition, bristling with action, his ronin defy the confines of their two-dimensional plane. If I sound excited, I have good reason, as our buyer has just procured a complete set of the Seichi gishu den (“Stories of the true loyalty of the faithful samurai”) printed around 1847-1848. According to B.W. Williams’ excellent study of Kuniyoshi’s warrior prints, “This is the earliest, and seems to have been the most popular, of Kuniyoshi’s series on the Forty-Seven Ronin.” It’s not unusual for the museum store to carry woodblock prints, but most have ranged from a few 1890s prints to those done anywhere from the 1920s-1970s (excluding the modern woodblock prints). The faithful samurai are off to the framers to get matted, so expect to see them in the windows of the store the first week of June.

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.