About FDASL

The Furniture and Decorative Arts of Sri Lanka (FDASL) is a documentary project that produced an inventory of furniture and other decorative arts that were created in Sri Lanka and are currently owned by Sri Lanka's cultural institutions and private collections. It is sponsored by the American Institute for Sri Lankan Studies. The participating institutions and private collections are listed below:

The inventory is presented in an image database of approximately 1,000 images of 400 unique items that were photographed by the project's principal researcher, Ayesha Abdur-Rahman, from 2006 to 2009. The first collections to be described were the furniture collections of the National Museums of Sri Lanka in Colombo, Galle, Kandy, and at Pettah. These collections primarily consist of furniture from the Portuguese, Dutch and British Periods (17th to 19th centuries). The Lunuganga Trust is composed of two residences previously owned by the internationally recognized Sri Lankan architect, Geoffrey Bawa. Upon his death, these historic home sites were left by Bawa to the Trust and contain a selection of his original furnishings. A legacy of the British period are numerous tea plantations with original bungalows and period furnishings. Three bungalows were inventoried during this project at Bogawantalawa Tea Estates and the the estate bungalows of the Punduloya tea estate group, Sheen and Harrow. Finally two private collections were inventoried for furniture as well as brass objects. The first of these collections is the A. Mohideen Collection, previously owned by Ghouse and Razeena Mohideen, that mainly covers the British period. The second collection is a collection of small brass objects from the late 19th and early 20th century belonging to Sheeraz Sellamuttu.