By Jodie (smartshanghai.com)
Updated: 2007-11-29 10:44

The Shanghai Arts and Crafts Museum is an unassuming gallery for Chinese folk art hidden on a quiet street just off the perennially bustling Huai Hai Lu. The site has been the location for the Shanghai Arts and Crafts Institute since 1960, and today functions as both a museum and workshop. Exhibitions stretch over three floors: the first and second levels accommodate a range of intricate ivory, jade and wood carvings, as well as textile-related crafts such as embroidery, knitted items and traditional theatrical costumes. The tour winds down in the basement gift shop, an expansive but comparably unattractive space filled with more affordable handicrafts, all of which are for sale. If you ever feel compelled to buy Chinese political needlepoint portraiture to hang in your dining room, here they are: Deng Xiaoping and Sun Zhongshan rendered in a solemn tribute only possible in the medium of embroidery. Of course, more humble items abound, and these can be found in the basement gift shops.

The museum, originally built in 1905 as the residence for the chamber of industry director during the French settlement, is styled after French architecture of the late Renaissance. The building reflects the classic Renaissance aesthetic: symmetric proportions, columns, rotundas - the works. The contents of the mansion, however, are anything but Western. Instead, the museum houses a collection of Shanghai handicrafts expressive of the Chinese folk traditions often neglected and disregarded in today's mainstream and "forward-thinking" culture. Besides these unique and rare pieces, also worth a look are the meticulously manicured gardens outside and the house's original Western-style bathroom on the second floor. A bathroom that is, incidentally, fully equipped with the regular amenities including a bathtub, toilet, and shower, not to mention the ornate stained-glass windows essential, of course, to any home.

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