GOLBALISATION IS nothing new. It is approximately 2,300 years old and began with the Silk Road. By both overland and by sea, the Road and its network connected the world’s two empires, the Chinese and the Roman, and the several… Continue reading
FOR THE FIRST time in 400 years, an ancient Japanese ceramic tradition has been adopted by contemporary designers – the Dutch design duo Scholten & Baijings and Japanese designer Teruhiro Yanagihara have created a contemporary collection of Arita porcelain along… Continue reading
JAPANESE FLOWERS – and their place in the home and garden – have long fascinated horticulturalists from Europe and America. In his 1892 essay In a Japanese Garden, writer and translator Lafcadio Hearn observed that ‘something about the Japanese manner… Continue reading
KRISHNA IN THE Garden of Assam: the Cultural Context of an Indian Textile explores the cultural history of Assam through an exhibition at the British Museum centred on a rare 17th-century woven silk textile from Assam in northeastern India called… Continue reading
TO CELEBRATE ITS 75th anniversary this year, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art (SBMA) has curated an exhibition of Indian religions and their art (on display until August), exploring the relationship between aesthetic expression and devotional practice, or puja, in… Continue reading
ON CHRISTMAS EVE 1923, Carl Whiting Bishop, the Freer Gallery of Art’s first curator, acquired a sculpture of ‘the Cosmic Buddha’, or Vairochana in Beijing. A headless, life-size limestone figure, the Buddha is an important figure in the Buddhist pantheon,… Continue reading
AT THE RISK of sounding trite, this exhibition promises to be amusing, being, as it is, a survey of Chinese misogyny. The title rather sums it up well, being akin to the old adage of ‘Good little girls go to… Continue reading
Having looked at many gardens around the world and pottered about in my own for a decade or two, I have come to feel that those of Japan and the British Isles seem to best delight the eye and stimulate… Continue reading
DECCAN ART IS having a breakout year. Although it opened on 20 April at the Met, curator Dr Navina Najat Haider has been compiling, researching, and anticipating Sultans of Deccan India, 1500-1700: Opulence and Fantasy for more than a decade.… Continue reading
IN A 1984 4 catalogue of the Flagstaff House Museum of Tea Ware in Hong Kong, Dr Lo Kwee-seong – a prominent businessman who founded the Vitasoy beverage empire – recollected fondly of the serendipity that led him to a… Continue reading