embroidered panel

sofa chair wardrobe with mirror

sofar kum shajonir asmali

My favourite furniture

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Rohingya families traditionally gifted furniture sets on big life occasions such as weddings or the births of children. Skilled carpenters made the sets to order from the hardwood of local trees in Rakhine such as sheguwan (teak), hatal (jackfruit), or siam fata, or the now popular Australian akashi (acacia). A family might plant trees with the aim of one day making a falonk (bedstead) or sat kum (table and chair set) to set up their daughter in her new household once she got married. Carpenters would carve beautiful decorative details such as flowers or vines. Special pieces of furniture could be very expensive and elaborate. For this workshop, the embroidery artists drew and rendered from memory their most beloved furniture items from Myanmar. Space constraints in the camp mean that few of the refugees in Cox❜s Bazar own any items of their traditional wooden furniture today, and their practice of commissioning and gifting furniture to mark life transitions is on hold for the present time. In Myanmar, Morijan used to spend a lot of time getting ready in front of the mirror. These furniture items were at her nani❜s (grandmother❜s) house where she spent a lot of time lounging on the sofar kum (sofa bed) and chatting with her nani. Her favorite furniture is the shajonir asmali (wardrobe with mirror) because it has a mirror.