Yoyamay is an ethnographic textile gallery founded by U Kyin Lam Mang (aka Pa Mang) and Daw Khun Shwe (aka Nu Shwe). They’ve been in the textile industry over a decade, collecting old textiles as well as creating contemporary traditional textiles. They started the business with the sole intention of gaining profits. However, after an appreciation for the traditional textiles was fostered, they decided to keep some of the textiles as their collection and sell the rest to those who have the same passion about textiles as they do.
Even in producing contemporary textiles as well, they came to realize that a substantial amount of weavers mostly women depend their lives on weaving textiles. Thus, they could not send back the textiles that they sent to them from Chin State just because the textiles are not in standard quality. For the weavers, it’s at least 30 to 50 hours of work. So, they started to buy every textile that the weavers made; some of them have been sold out but some of them are still in the inventory. Finally, they creatively came up with an idea of using good parts of some of the textiles which have been sitting in the inventory for a long time to make card holders, bags and cushion covers. The remaining parts of those textiles which are of low quality, however, are discarded. Moreover, since demands for bags and cushion covers have risen dramtically, they gave their younger daughter, Cing Chan Sang (Julie) to lead that branch of production. She’s now working on producing high-end bags and cushion covers with the guidance of some designers and those products are now available in Yoyamay gallery.
