There is a dual play of theme and technique by batik-art founder Dato' Chuah Thean Teng, milking his favourite staple of the Mother-and-Child bond and using a picture-within-a-picture format, framed by the window. The mother’s hand resting on the window sill ‘breaches’ into the exterior, but that is a steadying influence. A bird is perched on an un-enclosed bird cage, with the figures framed again by the orb of the handle. The top orb is balanced by the drooping yellow cloth attached beneath, which also acts to collect the bird’s droppings. To add a little bit of humour, the cloth resembles a Smiley image. This work is replete with the ubiquitous ‘cracked lines’ common in the early works of Teng, as the artist is more popularly known.   The legendary Dato' Chuah Thean Teng was hailed the ‘Father of Batik Painting’ by Professor Michael Sullivan (Chinese Art In The 20th Century) in 1959. The National Art Gallery accorded him a Retrospective in 1965 and a Tribute in 2008, while Penang honoured him with a retrospective in 1994 and conferred him the Dato' title in 1998 and the Living Heritage status in 2005. Teng was the only Malaysian invited for the Commonwealth Artists of Fame exhibition in London in 1977 to mark the Silver Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation, his second in London after a 1959 exhibition at the Commonwealth Institute. The images of his works, Two Of A Kind and Tell You A Secret, were chosen for UNICEF’s greeting cards in 1968 and 1988 respectively. Teng set up the Yahong Gallery, first in Leith Street in Penang, in 1953, and shifted to its present site in Batu Ferringhi in 1974.