Customer Reviews

Wayang Golek: The Entrancing World of Classical Javanese Puppet Theatre

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This is certainly the best Book on Wayang Golek, the Puppet Theater of Sunda (West-Java) published to date. It is really the first Source Book ever: Well organized, concise, with many wonderful photographs and drawings. The only other Books written on Wayang Golek are neither avaiable nor reliable. Of particular interest to me was the list of Wayang Golek Puppets arranged on stage and the arrangement of a Set according to affiliation. The categorization of Puppets may be considered arbitrary by some, but is really well thought out, useful, and a first attempt as such. Buurman categorizes the Puppets into Series primarily according to Facial Types and Head Dress. The Family Trees and the large Glossary contain some errors, but are both usable. I hope that Oxford University Press will decide to reprint this excellent Book.

A Short Story about the Book: I first saw this Book in Bogor in the early 90's, where a Puppetmaker showed it to me in Dutch. I immediately procured it in English, and from then on we used the Categoriztion used by Buurman for the ordering of Puppets. In that way I commisioned several hundred Wayang Golek Puppets to be made for me, and there was never a misunderstanding on which type was meant.