Thursday, October 23, 2003

This morning I received an email from faraway place in the USA and in reply I wrote, hi! Ms, thanks, well she is like me in a way, she would buy all those things that we do not really need but it is so nice to have it, so other then all the 'junks' that I had collected all those years, now her's collections have added to the already many beautiful things. I have now turn part of my hut into a sort of a museum, with this and that and I do still collect them, like on my recent visit to Bali, well if I could, I would have bought all of those art and craft, it was not possible, so I bought a little and the story goes on and on. A friend of mine did the smart thing, he has started a private museum at the twin tower shopping mall, where he display his collection for the public free and some he would sell especially the new craft and he is enjoying it, well I hope I could do it in the future and it would be fun to share with others all those junks that we love. I have always love arts and crafts; it is a fascination that I had since I was first exposed to the fine arts of the Malays in the forties. At that time most of the Malay's houses on the east coast on the Peninsular Malaysia are made of woods… hard tropical woods, these Malay craftsman have found a way to carved these hard woods into intricate design, mostly depicting nature such as flowers, shrub, plants such as bamboo, palms and the like. Their works are very fine indeed, all are done from memories pass down from generation to generation, they even carved on steel blade, i.e. the Kris, a sort of knife that were use by warriors in the by gone era, as a weapon used in a fight that killed. It is now used only as a symbol of power by the King. Is is also sometime worn by man when they put on a traditional dress at special ceremony. The Kris is also use as one of the instrument of power at the coronation of the King or Sultan. The word "criss cross" actually derive from the way two Kris are placed together when put on display. Every piece of the kris is a works of arts by itself and indeed a very unique piece of works on steel. This makes the Kris one of the great contribution of the Malay's society to the world.........

No comments: