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The Furniture and Decorative Arts of Sri Lanka (FDASL) is a documentary
project that produced an inventory of furniture and other decorative
arts that were created in Sri Lanka and are currently owned by Sri
Lanka's cultural institutions and private collections. It is sponsored
by the American Institute
for Sri Lankan Studies. The participating institutions and private
collections are listed below:
The inventory is presented in an image
database of approximately 1,000 images of 400 unique items that
were photographed by the project's principal researcher, Ayesha
Abdur-Rahman, from 2006 to 2009. The first collections to be described
were the furniture collections of the National Museums of Sri Lanka
in Colombo, Galle, Kandy, and at Pettah. These collections primarily
consist of furniture from the Portuguese, Dutch and British Periods
(17th to 19th centuries). The Lunuganga Trust is composed of two
residences previously owned by the internationally recognized Sri
Lankan architect, Geoffrey Bawa. Upon his death, these historic
home sites were left by Bawa to the Trust and contain a selection
of his original furnishings. A legacy of the British period are
numerous tea plantations with original bungalows and period furnishings.
Three bungalows were inventoried during this project at Bogawantalawa
Tea Estates and the the estate bungalows of the Punduloya tea estate
group, Sheen and Harrow. Finally two private collections were inventoried
for furniture as well as brass objects. The first of these collections
is the A. Mohideen Collection, previously owned by Ghouse and Razeena
Mohideen, that mainly covers the British period. The second collection
is a collection of small brass objects from the late 19th and early
20th century belonging to Sheeraz Sellamuttu.
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