Ten days ago to the Burma exhibition at the British Museum, drawn in some large part from the time Burma was part of the British Empire: a country that started as a shifting and diverse collection of states, some large, some small, passing through the colonial period and emerging today as the militarised Myanmar with its troubled minorities. I associate to what was the Union of India now drifting into a period of Hindu domination.
The snap above gives some idea of the British push east from India into what is now Myanmar. With the Lushal Hills, blue in the map above, holding out until nearly the end of nineteenth century. Perhaps too poor and too hilly to bother with. Now part of the Mizoram state in northeastern India.
I should declare a family connection to Mongmit, one of the Shan states in the northeastern part of what is now Myanmar. See reference 1.
A cold if bright start to the day, and I elected for a lift to the station, but we got stuck in the queue on West Hill and arrived with not much time to spare at all. But there was enough and I made it to Waterloo to find an unpleasantly noisy announcer on the Northern Line platform there. An announcer who was all too fond of the sound of his own voice.
From Tottenham Court Road to the queue outside the museum - I had not realised the museum did not open until 10:00 - where a chatty Belgian couple just behind us helped to pass the time away. The lady harked back to the glory days of Charles V while the husband had done his time as an altar boy. He knew all about the cold early mornings that Simenon had complained of before him. And once the doors did open the queue moved along fast enough, especially for those with tickets. To find ourselves in an impressively empty museum, just limbering up into receptive life for the day.
Then waiting for my rendez-vous, I was able to spend quality time with the head of the Egyptian Pharaoh Amenhotep III, more than 3,000 years old. The father of the heretic Akhenaten. An impressive bit of sculpture. See reference 2 for the man rather than the rock.
I think at least some of the catering at the museum was provided by Benugo and this was one of their sticky buns, involving at least a dab of cinnamon. Very sticky it was too, but entirely fit for the purpose of keeping me going after what was for me an early start.
From there into the exhibition, nicely laid out in the large segment of what was the Reading Room called Room 35. Cunningly broken up with tasteful wooden screens. Crowded, but not impossibly so. I thought the whole display was well put together. The curator knew his or her stuff - the rather snooty review I read somewhere, with its comments about stodgy labels more suitable for a postgraduate seminar, notwithstanding.
One of the objects that impressed me was that snapped above. Partly because I would not think why there would be a screw fitting at the top, partly because if it was gold, it must be worth a good deal as gold, never mind an antiquity. For some reason I neither read nor snapped the accompanying ticket, but it is very probably be the same as the large reliquary described at reference 4, turned up via Google Lens. The screw fitting was for the spire, which probably went missing at the time the reliquary was looted in the mid 19th century. The reliquary is made of thin gold sheets, worked using the repoussé technique of punching or pushed out the decoration from the inside.
There were a couple of amusing posters advertising well known household goods from the home country, one of which is snapped above.
Towards the end, this disembowelled snake, a modern piece, perhaps from someone taking lessons from Cadaver Hirst. But Google Lens suggested Myanmar artist, Soe Yu Nwe, to be found at reference 5, from where I have lifted the snap below, possibly from the same snake.
Along the way quite a lot of textiles. I was quite struck by the amount of interaction between the cloth workers of colonial Burma and those of neighbouring countries, in particular China to the north, and then the UK to the far west - with Burma taking both modern dyes and textiles from this last, to be worked into native products. And with fashions, designs and motifs moving all over the place.
To close, a map. Clearly the sort of topographical fidelity we value here in the west was either not valued or not wanted in the east. A map to be taken into my reading of Gombrich (already noticed at reference 6) on this very matter.
Still plenty of queue when we left at around 12:30. This being a Saturday. At this point, we had thought to go to Vinotec at Kings Cross, a place probably last visited before the plague, but in the event our taxi took us up York Way and so we jumped out at Kings Place to take a look in there.
The Google building across the way is coming on. How long before Google move in? Or have sub-let half of it in the light of the new after-plague working habits? A building mentioned at, for example, reference 7.
Downstairs to inspect the concert halls and where I was pleased to find the upside-down-do-not-climb-on-the-art pangolin (or some such) still present.
Back upstairs to inspect the bar, hosting some kind of party at one end, a party involving a party girl clad in a slinky number covered in gold sequins. Higher grade bar staff. Captured the piano already noticed at reference 3. Thought about eating, but the menu turned out to be very meatist - with the offering including one of those glass fronted refrigerators you get in butchers these days, containing all kinds of good looking meat, including foreribs cut as chops.
Out front to inspect the art, from a sculptor based in Kampala, one Peter Oloya. Some biography is to be found at reference 8.
A striking demonstration of the way it takes a lot of elbow-grease to get the look we know & love of marble from the raw material.
Out properly to take a look at the impressive crane from the people at reference 9, where there are lots of pictures. The one snapped above gave you a lot of height on a very modest base, possibly something from their Genie range.
Then to the canal - which included the sound of some brass instrument drifting over the water - and then down past the new Google building to Vinotec, where we were able to take a table and admire the presently fashionable ventilation system décor.
But sadly, the size of the new Google building had made the passage down to Vinotec - past lots of fancy trainer shops - a bit oppressive, new trees notwithstanding.
The grub, bread apart, was good, in my case vension with black pudding and real crinkly cabbage. For once, I quite liked the OTT gravy, even if it made it hard to pick out either the flavour or the texture of the black pudding.
Lots of people passing by. We wondered if they were passengers on the nearby Eurostar.
And so home, via a tube which was hot and crowded. Out at Vauxhall to a waxing moon, more than half, rising over the Vauxhall Tavern. A lot of cloud, but I managed a two but not a three at the aeroplane game. Fell asleep at Wimbledon, but woke to get out at Ewell West as intended and stroll down Longmead Road to take in the Saturday scene at TB. I was ejected from the private party in the saloon bar and settled down in the busy public bar, where there were at least some faces that I knew from the olden days. But mostly young people whom I didn't know, without vans.
PS 1: I notice from reference 4, that things go missing from the V&A too, although the author of that paper seems to think they wind up in one of the boxes, drawers or display cabinets of some learned society.
PS 2: and talking of moons, a waning half-moon is to be seen in the lightening sky, about 20° above the southern horizon, as I type this.
Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongmit_State.
Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amenhotep_III.
Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/01/piano.html. Piano 79, misspelt.
Reference 4: https://thesiamsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/JSS_103_0d_Stadtner_RajadhirajsRangoonRelics.pdf. Rajadhiraj’s Rangoon Relics and a Mon Funerary Stupa - Donald M. Stadtner, Journal of the Siam Society - 2015.
Reference 5: https://www.soeyunwe.com/.
Reference 6: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/01/constable.html.
Reference 7: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/08/trolley-578.html.
Reference 8: https://www.pangolinlondon.com/artists/118-peter-oloya/biography/.
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