Reviews & Press : : Penang, Through Gilded Doors

New Straits Times, 3 December 2006
by Marina Emmanuel

Doorway to Penang

A passion to share Penang's heritage visually and through text prompted a European lifestyle and antiques specialist to revisit her place of birth and produce an inspirational guide book. Marina Emmanuel gets an insight into the production of 'Penang Through Gilded Doors'.

HOW does one convey the personal meanings imbedded in a place she loves?

While some are inspired to compose a song, poem or even produce a movie, others opt to carve the memories of a location through pictures and prose.

For Julia de Bierre, who was born at the Penang General Hospital just before Malaysia achieved Independence, life as the daughter of an expatriate English couple in George Town was idyllic.

“Half a century later, in a changed world, I am conscious that I had a very privileged childhood,” she recalls, remembering it as a time when the family had no television, so most of her entertainment as a child was outdoors.

“This included cycling around the Pulau Tikus neighbourhood, building dams in the stream and waiting for the ice-cream vendor to come by.”

The typical colonial home in Brook Road, where she lived with her parents, Frederick and Hazel Weatherly, and siblings Philip, Annie and James, is described by de Bierre as one with open verandahs, never locked and a huge garden.

“At one stage, an Indian holy man moved into the hollow trunk of our old mango tree, and lived there, off and on, for a couple of years.”

As a child of eight, de Bierre was sent to Penang Hill on a wooden funicular train as a weekly boarder at Uplands School, an experience she described as enjoying the best of both worlds, since she could return home on weekends.

In her teens, she was sent to school in England where ‘life ceased to be warm and glorious technicolour and became cold and grey’.

“I longed for the summer holidays to return to the tropical island I still thought of as ‘home’,” she says.

The summer holidays and visits to Penang enabled de Bierre to store memories and images of unusual houses, mansions and buildings in her ‘mental’ scrapbook.

“When my brother James and several former Uplands pupils and I returned to Penang a couple of years ago for the school’s 50th anniversary celebrations, we realised how infinitely precious a childhood in Malaysia had been. It is something we, now living in Europe or America, will always carry with us — a little piece of paradise.”

Although de Bierre’s Uplands school mates and their families had left Malaysia by the 1970s, her parents stayed on.

“In fact, my father was still going to his office at Kennedy Burkill in Beach Street until he passed away in 2004 at the age of 89,” she says.

Visits to her parents in Penang, either from England and later from her home in France, were always a ‘thrill, so exotic and yet so familiar’, says de Bierre, pointing to the oft-cited belief that early childhood impressions are the strongest.

These impressions are showcased meaningfully in her book ‘Penang Through Gilded Doors’, which will be launched on Thursday.

Thanks to photographs taken with a fresh angle by photographer James Bain Smith, the 149-page book does not come across as simply another guide to Penang.

De Bierre’s efforts in taking the reader behind the many gilded doors one sees on shophouses, temples and mansions in Penang are meticulous.

She not only offers a magical ‘tour’ of Penang’s famed sights, but gives detailed insights into the life of the island’s people, its colours, tastes and smells.

Besides slicing into Penang’s numerous heritage-rich attributes, de Bierre’s timing in launching the book serves as a handy ‘tool’ for Visit Malaysia Year 2007.

“Recent years,” notes de Bierre, “have seen a growing interest in what is loosely termed ‘deco-tourism’ — urban and heritage tourism.

“I believe that Penang, with its richly diverse cultural mix and wealth of architecture and heritage sites, merits considerably more international recognition and that this book, effectively marketed and widely distributed, is an artistic yet user-friendly contribution to further that aim.”

Ahead of its Penang launch, a French edition of the book was launched in Paris in October via a partnership arrangement with Tourism Malaysia.

Interiors and antiques are listed as passions of this graduate of Bristol University, who majored in Theatre Studies and French.

Since 1995, de Bierre has curated the ‘Chateau de Lucens’, one of Switzerland’s most historic monuments.

She contributes to art and decorating magazines and collects furniture, ‘usually French, and always in need of restoration’.

The book project, however, does not appear to be the last of de Bierre’s link to Penang.

“Since renovating old houses, castles and apartments and bringing them back to life is part of my work and passion, I could not resist the prospect of an unpreposessing and unloved house in George Town,” she says.

“It belonged to the lady who runs the ‘kedai kopi’ where I have a bowl of koay teow every day.

“The location was perfect, the toolmaker tenants were moving out and she wanted to send her daughter to university, so I signed for the house over a cup of coffee.”

Now that she has a home in Penang, de Bierre hopes to spend two or three months a year on the island.

“And now that the book is finished,” she adds, “I will finally have time to choose the kitchen taps.”

‘Penang Through Gilded Doors’ will be launched by Yang diPertua Negeri Tun Abdul Rahman Abbas in Penang on Thursday. The book is available in major bookstores and at www.arecabooks.com.