Artefacts (Asian Civilisations Museum)

The gallery that we chose to focus on in the Asian Civilisations Museum (ACM) was based on India.

The 3 artefacts that we chose to focus on was a watermaze game, block printing and coins.

First of all, the watermaze:

The watermaze was a game that was played in the olden times where gaming consoles, and mobile devices did not exist. This game is played by filling the maze with water and floating a marble out of the maze. Even a simple game like this could being a smile to anyone's face. :)

Then the area on block printing:

Block printing was invented as a labour saving way to decorate cloth. Artisians could repeat the same designs on a piece of cloth using the same designs. A series of coordinated blocks for different colours would create sophisticated designs. Sometimes part of block-printed cloth would also be embellished with painting or resist dyeing. The blocks would be carved out with the designs first, and then dipped in ink and stamped on the cloth to create a design. The link below will provide further information on how it is done.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ej0D_qxBd2w

Last but not least, the coins.

As clearly shown in the picture, these are handmade coins. Most, if not all the coins that we use in the world today are made by factories. However, these were one of the first coins that were created by mankind. Pretty cool huh?

Overall, the exhibit on India was very fascinating and we learnt a lot from it that day.