Country & Eastern was established in Norwich over 40 years ago and is the museum shop for The South Asia Collection. The shop stocks a large, interesting and unusual range of decorative furniture, furnishings, clothes and jewellery, tailored to the tastes of our customers but based on the traditional skills and crafts of artisans primarily in South Asia.
The shop is a major funder of the South Asian Decorative Arts and Crafts Collection Trust – SADACC, which manages the collection and funds and participates in research projects in South Asia working with Museums and universities in the region.
The shop in many cases sells contemporary examples of items in the collection.
Our Philosophy
Our philosophy is to work closely with our suppliers and their crafts men and women so helping to keep alive traditional crafts such as woodblock printing, hand-loom weaving, rug weaving, embroidery, vegetable dyeing, miniature painting and wood carving. Jeannie and Philip – trustees of SADACC, travel extensively throughout South Asia personally selecting all items sold.
Product Sourcing
Country & Eastern originally bought from countries extending from Turkey through the Indian sub-continent to east of Java however the focus is now mainly on South Asia. We have always tended to buy from smaller family run enterprises and most of the families we started with some 40 years ago are still supplying us today. In many cases, however, it is the second generation who are now in charge.
A prime objective of Country & Eastern has been to help keep alive traditional crafts such as wood block printing, hand loom weaving, carpet weaving, vegetable dyeing, embroidery, wood carving and miniature paintings. These crafts have been the basis of decorative furnishings coming from South Asia for centuries.
We endeavour to supply our customers with furnishings that have an authenticity that is lacking in many items produced in this region purely to Western designs.
Our customers thus obtain furnishings that are part of flourishing traditions that have been passed from generation to generation and whose origins are firmly rooted in the arts and crafts of South and South East Asia.
