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Dear Editor and Fellow Members,24LETTER TO THE EDITORJust wanted to let you know the latest turn in my ever-widening career trajectory. Ihave accepted a job as Lecturer in Fashion (Contextual Studies) at LASALLE-SIA College ofthe Arts in Singapore and will be moving out there in early February to take up a 3-year post.It’s all very exciting and slightly terrifying as well, but in a very good way!I hope you are all very well and indeed if any of you happen to be out Singapore wayin the next few years I would be delighted to see you.(emma_dick@hotrnail.com)Emma DickMUSEUMS ROUND-UPNews from Paris and SwedenThe 101 year-old Musée des Arts Decoratifs, situated in a wing of the Louvre, has,been closed for many years, but reopened last September under the new name “Les ArtsDecoratifs”. So far as textiles are concerned, the collection’s carpets are on permanent loan tothe Louvre, and some tapestries are hanging in period rooms. Unfortunately, although thecollection is rich in textiles, lack of funds prevents any more being on view at present. Tel. 00331 44 55 59 02 or www.lesartsdecoratifs.frThe Musée des Arts de 1’Asie (Musée Cernuschi) has also been closed for extensiverenovation and reopened last June with a stunning exhibition of Sasanian art, including 30textiles which you cannot rush off to see as it finished at the end of 2006, and I have beenunable to discover what is on now. Tel. 00 331 53 96 21 50.Finally, a new museum the Musée du Quai Branly also opened last June, and has aninteresting collection of textiles from Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas. Tel. 00 331 5661 70 00Situated on a beautiful island in central Stockholm, the Museum of Far EasternAntiquities has reopened after being closed for two years. Originally established in 1926primarily to house the archaeological collections brought home from China by Johan GunnarAndersson, the museum was expanded in 1959 when the National Museum’s collections ofart and crafts from eastern and south-eastern Asia were transferred to it. The newly reopenedmuseum contains nearly 100,000 objects, mostly Chinese archaeological artefacts and artisticpieces, but has through purchase and generous donations managed to increase its holdings ofart and artefacts from Korea, Japan, India and Southeast Asia.
25Margareta Alin has been appointed director of the National Museum of WorldCultures at Goteborg and took up her duties there on 1 January. With degrees in ethnology,art history and archaeology she has had a distinguished career, including being Chairman ofthe Swedish National Commission for UNESCO. Before taking up her new post she wasdirector of Kulturen in Lund for thirteen years, and in that capacity received a number ofrecognitions and awards. It sounds as though the Museum of World Cultures is on to a goodthing.EditorBOOKSThe Culture and Costume of the Shan PeopleSusan Conway, The Shan: Culture, Art and Crafts, River Books, Bangkok, 2006, 28 x 22 cm,212 pp, over 300 col. illus., ISBN 974 9863 06 2, hb, £35I have been interested in Chin textiles from north west Burma for a long time, but untilreading Susan Conway’s book knew nothing about the Shan, with whom the Chin claimshared ancestry through the Tai. The Shan states are located in the north east of modernBurma or Myanmar, sharing borders with China, Laos and Thailand, although the populationof this area by many ethnic groups long predates any imposed political boundaries. Theinhabitants of the Shan States are. a mix of hill and valley dwellers, Buddhist princes andvillagers. Helen Mears’ article on Shan Court <strong>Textile</strong>s at the Brighton Museum in <strong>OATG</strong>newsletter No. 34, June 2006 is well worth rereading for some background and a synopsis ofthe changes that have taken place over time in the Shan States.Conway’s introductory chapters on the history of their settlement and thedevelopment of a shared culture are extremely interesting. In this book she focuses on thevalley people of the Shan States, defined like the Chin as descendants of the Tai, whomigrated from south China from as early as the first century AD. The Burmese and later theBritish used the term Shan to define all the Tai people living in the Shan States.Powerful Shan princes ruled over principalities the size of small European countries,employing skilled artisans to build and decorate palaces and weavers, dyers and embroiderersto provide court dress and regalia for ceremonial use. The book is organized to span thecomponents of this elaborate way of life, with chapters on male and female dress, palacedesign and construction and Shan arts and crafts. I was most interested in the dress andtextiles and found the hierarchical nature of clothing and costume construction intriguing.“Correct” dress was observed by women when distinct ethnic groupings needed to beconveyed, indicating the accepted perceptions of the primitive nature of hill tribes as opposedto the civilised lowland societies, and dress was frequently varied to suit the circumstances ofthe wearer. In comparison to the cotton leggings of the hill women, the women of the Shancourts wore ankle length silk skirts and loose blouses. The Shan States were organised intopolitical and social territorial units or muong, the less powerful of these paying tribute ortaxes to the more dominant. In turn the dominant princes were tributary to the surroundingsuper powers of Burma, China and Siam. Those tributary to Burma were allocated court dressand regalia according to Burmese sumptuary law for the annual tribute ceremonies, and
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