About

Object Number: Ea9752, Ea9754

Collection: Eastern Art

This ornate and imposing silver centrepiece was made for L. M. Parlett, a judge in the Indian Civil Service employed in Burma. The craftsman was Aung Myat, an award-winning Burmese silversmith from Thayetmyo, and it was made in the early-twentieth century. The imperial regime held craft fairs where silversmiths and other metal workers submitted pieces for competition to win prizes. Aung Myat received honours in at least one of these events. The centrepiece itself is decorated with astrologically significant creatures, such as the fabulous lion-creature, the chinthe, and elephants, and scenes from Burmese folk stories. But it was an object designed for British dining tables. Items like this could cost over a thousand rupees, roughly the cost of a small working elephant in the late-nineteenth century. They were not to everyone’s taste, however. One British tourist, Alice Hart, wrote in her 1897 book Picturesque Burma that, in her opinion, items ‘made from Burmese designs for the English market’ were ‘striking and grotesque in design’.