Three fold screen

Photogallery

Three fold screen
Three fold screen
Collection

The screens, which have the function of dividing interior spaces, become at the same time a place for expressing cultural traditions, habits and customs through images and decorations. In the Far East in particular they are an element of interior decoration present in all homes where they often delimit the most important internal space designated for the most important person in the family, clan or village.
The three-panelled screen displayed here, dating from the nineteenth to twentieth centuries and from Java, was originally a wooden frame decorated with an elaborate vegetable motif with floral shoots.
On the three inner panels, in parchment, three puppets have been attached, in the process of a wayang performance. In the centre there is a sort of upright fan called a gunungan, the tree of life, used as a symbol to divide the different phases of the performance and to divide the two opposite groups of characters. The item, decorated in lively colours, shows two raksasa guardians at the sides of the entrance to an opulent building that acts as the base of the tree of life.
The two puppets at the sides are two of the main characters of wayang theatre: Kresna, represented here on the left wearing a high crown, and the elder brother Yudistira (Prabu Puntadewa), on the right.