The Ethnic Art & Craft Collection

After early careers in art and education, followed by several years as self-sufficient farmers, my wife and I thought it would be fun to start a fair-trade ethnic art and craft business to fund some world travel. Our first trip was to the Far East (Hong Kong, Bangkok and Bali) where we purchased a fascinating assortment of ethnic crafts rarely seen in the West in the 1980s…beautiful hand-woven textiles, demon masks, shadow puppets, bone carvings, batik paintings, silk embroidered pictures, carved wooden flowers, and etched palm-leaf books…and set up shop in Falmouth in Southwest England on our return. Our ‘Morning Price Gallery’ proved extremely popular and successful, and before long we opened two more galleries in West Cornwall, and a little later started a fair-trade wholesale business ‘World Art & Crafts’ to supply gift shops and galleries throughout the UK and Europe.

The popularity and success of our fair trade business enabled us to make frequent buying trips (more than 40 to Bali alone), and we continued to travel around the world as professional specialist importers sourcing decorative and ethnic art and crafts for ourselves and for museums, galleries and private collectors for the next 25 years. Wherever we went we tried to keep some of the very best of our finds for ourselves, and over the years we were able to amass a significant private collection of singing bowls, bells, carvings, masks, textiles, paintings, baskets, and antique sacred, ceremonial and ritual artifacts.

In 2010 we sold our business, downsized our property and retired to the Cornish coast, where we returned to our roots as practicing artists. Unfortunately, we no longer had the space to display our collection in its entirety, and most of it ended up in storage. Sadly, Maureen passed away in 2015 and I have since decided to part with much of the collection to supplement my pension and fund the Nepal-based charity, One Golden Angel, that I set up in Maureen’s memory. I travel to Nepal 3 times annually, each time for a month, to administer a variety of humanitarian projects in her name, and hopefully source a few more exceptional and rare antique singing bowls.

All the items listed under the ETHNIC tab, located in the toolbar, were personally chosen at source for their aesthetic quality and intrinsic interest, as well as their authenticity and cultural significance. I will add new items as soon as time permits, including Balinese Masks, and some superb Indonesian and Indian textiles. Please look back from time to time.

Click here for Ethnic Art & Crafts.