Asian Arts | Associations | Articles | Exhibitions | Galleries | Message Board

Thank ahead of time for reading this. I found this pieces recently and I am not sure if they are from the Angkor Wat temple but my gut tells me they are. I do not know they age. They have some repairs done to them- one of them looks professional. The back is wood and they are heavy. the mounting looks professional.It looks like it is on rice paper.
Can any one tell the the age? Is it from Angkor Wat temple. Thank you so much of any help.

These are so-called "temple rubbings" depicting traditionally costumed Thai dancers in poses from the Ramakien, the Thai national dance based on the Hindu epic, "The Ramayana". You can find many of these items on the internet, particularly in spots such as eBay, labeled as temple rubbings, some claimed to be from Cambodia despite the styles being somewhat different. Here's a picture of a rubbing acquired in Laos during the early 1970s and attributed to Ankor Wat. However, there are Khmer temple complexes inside Thailand, which could have been the source of this piece.

Wat Po Near the Palace in Bangkok has some reproductions of Khmer relief sculpture, which art also is a source of rubbings. It seems from estate sales in the USA recently that a majority of soldiers who visited Bangkok or served in Thailand during the Vietnam War took some of these souvenirs back home to remember “Khrungthep Maha Nakhorn”, the Grand City of Angels, as the Thais call their capital.

Ankor Wat is a World Heritage Site under UNESCO protection, so no real rubbings come out of Cambodia legally today.

Best regards,

Bill H.

I think they look Javanese.
Ernest

I think you'll find that these are Thai rather than Cambodian.

Asian Arts | Associations | Articles | Exhibitions | Galleries | Message Board