TAASA Review Issues

Heleanor Feltham

Thank you to all of our members who filled in the questionnaire on their membership forms. The number and range of interests has certainly confirmed our belief that there is a broadly-based interest, not only in the traditional decorative arts of Asia, but also in contemporary and performing arts.

I’ve surveyed 238 forms, representing the mid-January membership (not counting the Committee), and I thought you might all be interested in the results.

Where do you come from? Well, to be honest, mostly Sydney at the moment (83%), though our interstate membership is growing, and Paul, our Secretary, tells me that there is a very good chance of a separate Victorian chapter developing in the near future. However we have members in London, Vientiane, and South Africa as well as in most Australian states and the ACT.

Ordinary members (singles and doubles) make up 72%, Founding 17%. There are 7 Life and 10 Corporate members, and rather fewer Concessions than we would like – you don’t have to be middle-aged to belong.

What countries are you interested in? Deleting the 22% of you who didn’t fill in that side of the card, we scored 76% for China, 69% for Southeast Asia, 65% for Japan and Korea, 52% for the Indian Subcontinent (and several Members nominated Tibet and Nepal either here or in Other), and a mildly disappointing 42% for the Middle East.

Mind you, more than one in four fillers-in nominated “all of the above” as their special interest!

It was also good to discover that almost half of our members have a special interest in the performing arts – 51% like dance and performance, 45% are interested in film and another 41% vote for music. Some specialist interests in this area include puppet theatre (Chinese and wayang), Japanese gagaku, Korean aak, Chinese opera and intercultural Australian performance of all kinds. Several people specified theatre with dance/performance or in the “other” category.

The decorative arts scored very highly with ceramics (75%) just nosing out painting (70%) followed by sculpture (67%), textiles, dress and jewellery (64. %), furniture and lacquer (60%), architecture (59%) then a bit of a nose-dive to glass at 40% and arms and metalwork at 34% (with three people crossing out arms, and one with a very specialist interest in Javanese kris).

Arts nominated in “Other” included bonsai and landscape gardens, calligraphy, printmaking and manuscripts, netsuke, snuff bottles and jade, Chinese bronzes, rugs, rugs, carpets and rugs, Buddhist art, tribal art, food, literature, graphic and industrial design, the technology of production of decorative arts, the Tang era, Chinoiserie, and several votes for contemporary arts.

Cultural anthropology, the role of the artist/craftsperson in society, cultural exchange and comparative cultures were also mentioned.

If we cater to all these interests (and if some of those interested people write for TAASA Review), we should be in business for years to come.

Again, thank you. And please, keep sending in information – surveys do get updated, you know.