History of the collection
The South Asia Collection is mainly formed from a private collection put together by our lead Trustees and Founders, Philip and Jeannie Millward. Their journey in collecting in South Asia began when they first travelled to Pakistan in 1979. On this trip, they travelled from Karachi to Lahore to Rawalpindi and Islamabad, to Peshawar, and finally to what was originally the summer residence of the Wali of Swat. This trip formed the basis for setting up their retail business, Country and Eastern Ltd.
‘So taken were we by the crafts of the valley that we decided on April 19th to take a bus to a go-down in Khwazakhela and put a shipment together in a very large tin chest, and send it back to Jarretts store in Norwich where it sat until our return. This date of April 19th 1979 we always consider as the starting date of Country & Eastern. The name came from Country Antiques sold by Jeannie in Camden Passage, and Eastern decorative objects.’
In the years that followed they regularly returned, travelling also to India and Indonesia. Whilst developing their retail business in the UK, they established long-standing relationships with craftspeople and suppliers from South and South-East Asia. During their travels they bought items for their personal collection that they felt were exceptional examples of craft from the places and people they visited. They also established a business philosophy of never selling an item unless they had a better example of it. By 2006, they had built up a collection of 3,500 items.
In 2006, the collection was formally assessed by experts at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford and a road map was drawn out to make the collection accessible as a knowledge resource. In 2010, a subsequent assessment was conducted by the University of East Anglia in Norwich. Both assessments concluded that the collection was ‘the most pre-eminent collection of its kind in the UK.’ With this assessment and external advice, Philip and Jeannie Millward established The SADACC Trust in 2010 to ensure the collections long-term preservation and improve access to the public by the establishment of a museum.
Since 2010, The SADACC Trust has endeavoured to set up regular displays and exhibitions, fund and support educational research, develop collaborative research projects with institutions in India, loan objects for external exhibitions and share knowledge through talks and events at the museum. In 2018, the museum activities of the Trust were organised under a more accessible brand name called The South Asia Collection.
About the collection
The South Asia Collection now consists of almost 10,000 objects and artworks from South and South-East Asia, which include textiles, architectural elements, furniture, everyday objects and examples of crafts and living traditions. Our collection of artworks includes narrative paintings such as Gond, Madhubani, Warli and Bhil from around India, watercolours and prints of works by European artists travelling in South Asia in the 18th and 19th century, postcards, stereographs among others.
We maintain a database of our collection objects most of which can be viewed in our Collections section.
