A REJUVENATION CURE?
Inventing Yogya Silver, ‘Saving’ a Perishing Javanese Industry

by Marjolein van Asdonck







In the 1930s, 'Yogya silver' became a 'rejuvenated' craft by Mrs. Van Gesseler Verschuir-Pownall. In close collaboration with the Archaeological services, Mrs. Van Gesseler Verschuir-Pownall would select 'authentic' motifs, after which she would commission silversmiths to produce these objects for a European market. Van Asdonck looks at the causes of the 'decline' of the silversmith industry in Java, and the violent nature of the Ethical Policy in the field of arts and crafts. Rather than understanding Yogya Silver as a revival, Van Asdonck understands it as an invented practice of erasure in the context of colonial and imperial relations.

Marjolein van Asdonck works as the Curator Southeast Asia at the Wereldmuseum, with a focus on Indonesian material culture, colonial history and communities from the Indonesian diaspora. Prior to this, she was editor-in-chief of the magazine Moesson, founded in 1956 by the Eurasian community in the Netherlands. She studied Indonesian Languages and Cultures at the University of Leiden.







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COLOPHON

AUTHORS
Marjolein van Asdonck
Raistiwar Pratama
Saut Situmorang
Marjolein van Pagee
Rosa te Velde

READERS
Fitria Jelyta
Lisa Baumgarten
Mark Oomen

EDITING/PROOFREADING
Harriet Foyster
Iris Pissaride
Marjolein van Pagee

IMAGE RESEARCH
Rosa te Velde

GRAPHIC DESIGN
Zuzana KostelanskáCC BY-NC-ND

This project is published under CC BY-NC-ND license, which enables reusers to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form only, for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. 

Some of the texts were published before by the Wereldmuseum (02 ‘Yes, but...’; 03 A Firm Nudge & 06 A Rejuvenation Cure?).

Questions/corrections/suggestions? Contact us at
recallrecalibrate (at) gmail.com 2025

This project was funded by Het Stimuleringsfonds voor de Creatieve Industrie.




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