site contributors

Pamela Cross

Eric Anderson

Chris Buckley

Chris Buckley is a collector of ethnic textiles - see his Torana tribal website selling ethnic minority textiles and Asian art - but he is better known to Beijing residents as the "Tibetan carpet guy". Chris is originally from England and came to China in 1995, having previously lived in Japan, where he acquired a taste for things handmade and an appreciation for texture. He used to work for a multinational company but that is a long time in the past now: these days he spends most of his time on his Tibetan carpet business. He has a workshop near Lhasa making Tibetan carpets the traditional way, with designs that are mostly by him, and that are sold in his stores in Beijing and Shanghai as well as to individual clients and interior designers overseas. More about his Tibetan carpet business can be found on his Toranahouse website. He is also interested in Tibetan crafts generally and in painted furniture in particular, a subject he wrote a book about. Chris can be contacted via his websites. See his Weaving Li Minority "Brocade": travel notes from his June 2010 visit to Hainan and his August 2010 Textile travel notes from Eastern Flores and Lembata.

Jose Casal

Tony Chen Hualong

Monique Derwig

Andrew Dudley

Nick Fielding

Suzi Garner

Rusty & Crista Hippchen

Rusty and Crista Hippchen are American collectors from Alaska.  Rusty is a seasonal worker in the field of natural resources, requiring him to work long hours for half of the year but allowing ample opportunity for travel during the long Alaskan winter.  Indulging in textile collecting has become his major passion.  Crista has lived abroad for five years, three of which were spent performing with a theatre company in Asia.  She speaks four languages and is usually the one paging through a language book as Rusty tries to cut a deal.  She has also become enthralled in the search for the perfect tribal textile.  Their collection partially concentrates on the textiles of the Hmong and the Yao of Laos.  They also have many pieces from southern and southwest Chinese minority tribes.  As the collection has grown, so has the focus which now includes a wide variety of tribal handicrafts such as baskets, musical instruments, opium scales and jewelry.  See their Hani textiles collected in early 2003 in Menghai county, Xishuangbanna Prefecture, Yunnan province, southwest China. [I have lost touch with Rusty so, if you see this, Rusty, please get in touch!]

Bill Hornaday

Donna Lum

Peter Reimann

Peter Reimann (1922-2014) was born in Berlin on November 5, 1922, and lived a long and rich life. Raised in Berlin, he served as a medic in World War II at age 17 and pursued a degree in medicine at Heidelberg University. After obtaining his degree and then studying as a postdoctoral fellow at the Sorbonne, he went in 1958 to work for the German Red Cross in Pusan, Republic of Korea with the rank of Lieutenant in the US Armed Forces.  While there he met his wife Dr. Myunghee Kim who herself became the first Freudian psychoanalyst from Korea, a pioneer in her field. The two immigrated to the United States and started a family, first living in Manhattan and then moving to New Jersey. After practicing in Irvington for several years, he moved to Springfield where he worked and lived until his death. Dr. Reimann had a private practice as a doctor in New Jersey for 30 years. He was an old fashioned doctor who made house calls with a black doctor's bag and was dedicated to serving all people in medical need. He also worked at Overlook Hospital and at the infirmary at Farleigh Dickenson University. He was an amateur musician, art historian, anthropologist and ethnographer, with a detailed knowledge of a wide range of global art and culture. He traveled all over the world, with his last trip at the age of 80 to Tibet. He was an avid player and listener of Classical Music. 

After Myunghee Kim Reimann died in a car accident in 1996 he never remarried.  He is succeeded by his daughters, Kim, a political scientist and professor at Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia and Hannah, a musician, actress and music teacher in Greenwich Village, New York City.

Dr. Reimann became the subject of his daughter, Hannah's, first documentary feature film, My Father's House, a movie about Alzheimer's Disease, related dementia, family, caregiving and a quest to find effective treatments for these terrible illnesses.  Via footage of him shot over three years, he discusses, among other things, his anti-Nazi sentiment and activity during the War, his love of music and culture as we watch his brilliant mind succumb until his death on March 18th, 2014.

Sandra Shamis

Olivier Tallec

Wu yingjian