BEAD WORK, PANEL

This panel is made in Penang by the Peranakan Chinese, who lived in the Malay Peninsula and the Indonesian Archipelago. After research this panel has been identified as being made in Penang, Malaysia in 1910. The fine beads are hand stitched onto a canvas or linen background.

It is unusually fine with 24 beads per linear inch, and 576 beads per square inch. The design has several rectangular borders which are filled with flowers and birds. There are a very large number of colours of beads all carefully hand stitched into place on a linen background.

This piece would appear to have been unused as there are no signs of it having been made into anything.

Czech beads would have most likely been used. They would be size 13/0 and would have around 150 – 200 per gramme. Needle size 13 and smaller would need to be used to stitch this work.

Nyonya beadwork is from the Peranakan Chinese who are descendants of the Chinese migrants to the Malay Peninsula and the Indonesian archipelago. They are not all Chinese, but also include those of Indian Muslim and Arab descent. Located at the bustling crossroads of the East-West trade, the Peranakan Chinese were immersed in an environment where different cultures and ethnicities encountered one another on a regular basis. They were largely concentrated in urban centres of the Straits Settlements – Penang, Melaka (Malacca) and Singapore and the Netherlands Indies such as Batavia (Jakarta) Semarang, Cirebon and Palembang. Many of these were flourishing trading posts.

Nyonya are the womenfolk of the Peranakan Chinese community who were taught from a young age to sew , do beadwork and embroidery.

The pinnacle of Nonya beadwork was between 1870 and 1920 coinciding with the ‘golden age’ of Peranakan Chinese society.

There is a long history of importation of glass beads into South East Asia. Their work is not based on fancy beads, rather on the cheaper small monochrome beads which were readily available. By the late 1840s more than 150 colours of glass seed beads were available. It is likely that the beads came from either Venise or Czechoslovakia, and could be solid colours, opaque, colour lined and silver lined.

There are several forms of beadwork undertaken by the Peranakan:

Bead couching, where beads are put onto a string and couched into place

Bead netting: This creates a type of mesh (similar to the recent ink pot accessioned). This is a widespread technique, and is also used by the Dayak in Indonesia