Spirit of Wood – The Art of Malay Woodcarving
Spirit of wood. The art of Malay woodcarving. Works by master carvers from Kelantan, Terengganu and Pattani. Farish A. Noor and Eddin Khoo, photographs by David Lok. [Hong Kong]: Periplus Editions (HK), 2003. ISBN 0-7946-0103-0.

This beautiful and unusual book is the result of a collaboration between two master Malaysian woodcarvers, Nik Rashiddin Nik Hussein of Kelantan and his protégé Norhaiza Noordin from Terengganu, and a team of writers and others they inspired. The story of how the project evolved is told by Waveney Jenkins in the 'Postscript' (pp.162-3), from its beginnings in meetings and long discussions in 1998, through a research visit to the most important European collections of Malay keris in 1999 and the staging of a small exhibition in Kuala Lumpur in 2000, all with a view to holding a major international exhibition in 2003. In the middle of these plans Nik Rashiddin was diagnosed with a tumour on his spine, and after a short and devastating illness he died, aged 47, in August 2002. Nonetheless, Spirit of Wood, an exhibition of works carved by Nik Rashiddin and Norhaiza and historic wooden artefacts collected by them, accompanied by fine drawings by both artists, opened at the Asian Civilisations Museum in Singapore in September 2003, and indeed then travelled on to the Brunei Gallery in London in 2004 before returning to be exhibed at the National Museum in Kuala Lumpur and the State Museum in Trengganu. The book is in the process of being translated into Malay, and copies can still be obtained from Akademi Nik Rashiddin