[The earliest piece in
the collection is a Qalamdan, a pen case with inkwell used to hold quills and
ink, made around 1570, a highly symbolic object used in the distribution of
rank within the Mughal Empire’s system of patronage and compensation.]
By Nazanin Lankarani
 |
Prudence Cuming Associates and Laziz Hamani
A pen case and inkwell, a highly symbolic object used in the distribution of rank within the Mughal
Empire, circa 1575.
|
PARIS — In 2009, Sheikh Hamad
bin Abdulla al-Thani visited an exhibition titled “Maharaja, the Splendor of
India’s Royal Courts,” at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and was
smitten.
Over the next four years
Mr. Thani, a member of the Qatari royal family, went on a quest to put together
a collection of Indian jewelry and artwork of exceptional provenance, buying up
the best that could be found in auctions or through specialized dealers.
In this he was aided by
Amin Jaffer, a consultant curator for the Victoria and Albert show who in 2009
was working in the museum’s Asian department, and who now is international
director of Asian art at Christie’s.
Mr. Thani’s collection
consists of 140 pieces, mostly of imperial provenance from the Mughal Empire
but also including rare pieces created by contemporary jewelry designers.
At least for now, the
collection is not open to the public. But a book based on it, edited by Mr.
Jaffer, was being published this month, with introductory parties at the Frick
Collection in New York, the Victoria and Albert and the Musée de la Légion
d’Honneur in Paris.
The 360-page book,
published in English by Assouline and aptly titled “Beyond Extravagance,”
traces back to their origins the historical pieces in Mr. Thani’s collection.
Rich with vintage photography, reproductions of miniature paintings, archive
material and essays by leading experts, it covers more than four centuries and
promises to become a definitive reference work on the history, setting
techniques and culture of Indian jewelry.
India’s tradition of
jewelry making and ornamental objects spans several centuries and remains today
both an inexhaustible hunting ground for collectors and an evolving source of
inspiration for contemporary designers.
“India has forever been
a source of precious stones,” Mr. Jaffer said, during an interview in London.
“The Indian subcontinent has enjoyed a uniquely sophisticated tradition in
which gems and jewels have been an integral aspect of daily wear across classes
and faiths.”
“Jewels and stones of
Indian provenance were leaving India starting in the 17th century,” Mr. Jaffer
said. “Many of the stones of the House of France or the Crown of England were
Indian stones.”
Among the most
legendary, the Koh-i-Noor, today weighing over 105 carats and set into the
crown of Queen Elizabeth II, was mined in the state of Andhra Pradesh in
southeastern India.
“After the independence
of India, between 1947 and 1970, royal families took their easily disposable
jewels out of the country as their incomes became severely curtailed,” Mr.
Jaffer said.
Today, the export of
historical pieces of national importance from India is regulated. Those in Mr.
Thani’s collection were all sourced abroad.
“Many pieces were
acquired from Cartier’s inventory,” Mr. Jaffer said. “Others came from top
dealers, in fairs like Masterpiece in London or the Biennale des Antiquaires in
Paris.”
Experts argue over what
constitutes the high point of India’s jewelry making traditions, but there is
broad agreement that the Mughal courts produced the most spectacular pieces in
the mid 1600s.
“Typically, the jeweled
arts of the Mughal courts have most excited enthusiasts of Indian jewelry,” Mr.
Jaffer said.
Wider in scope, this
collection explores, across various epochs, indigenous Indian traditions; the
assimilation of foreign styles into Indian taste — including the impact of the
Victorian Raj on Indian production; and the technological advances brought by
new western setting techniques.
The earliest piece in
the collection is a Qalamdan, a pen case with inkwell used to hold quills and
ink, made around 1570, a highly symbolic object used in the distribution of
rank within the Mughal Empire’s system of patronage and compensation.
“A Mughal emperor would
have given this gold object encrusted with precious stones to a member of his
court as an insignia of rank,” Mr. Jaffer said.
Visitors to the Victoria
and Albert Museum may have seen “Tipu’s Tiger,” a life-size automaton carved
and painted wood, depicting a tiger in the act of devouring a prostrate
European.
“Tipu Sultan was a ruler
in Mysore, southern India, who identified himself with the tiger,” Mr. Jaffer
said. “His gold throne, encrusted with bejeweled tigers had eight finials
around its railings. When Tipu was defeated in 1799, the throne was broken up
and the gold given away as loot to British officers.”
The collection features
one of eight finials from the throne of Tipu Sultan, in the form of a tiger’s
head, in gold set with diamonds, rubies and emeralds.
In the early 20th
century, many European jewelers, fascinated by the exotic combination of colors
and textures of Asian art, turned to India not just to source precious stones
and explore its markets, but to find fresh inspiration for pieces to intrigue
their European clients.
“In Paris alone,
Chaumet, Dusausoy, Mauboussin and Van Cleef & Arpels were experimenting
with Indian styles and stones by the 1920s, a trend that gathered momentum as
more clients from India began to place orders in Europe,” wrote Katherine
Prior, a historian specializing in the British Empire and India, in a chapter
of “Beyond Extravagance,” entitled Twentieth-Century Encounters Between Indian
and European Jewelry.
Mr. Jaffer said, “Many
of the pieces from this period are exotic, barbaric, ‘eastern,’ yet they are made
in France.”
A Mughal emerald, carved
between 1630 and 1650 in India with stylized chrysanthemum, lotus and Mughal
poppy flowers, formed the centerpiece of a spectacular Cartier shoulder
ornament known as the Collier Bérénice. It was exhibited in 1925 at the
Exposition des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, the Paris world’s fair
that gave rise to the term Art Deco.
Known today as the Taj
Mahal Emerald, the hexagonal-cut stone weighing more than 141 carats was sold
in a Christie’s New York auction in 2009 for nearly $800,000. It was
subsequently acquired by Mr. Thani who, circling back, had it reset by Cartier
as a brooch.
The appeal of Indian
composition is also evident in an aigrette designed in 1910 by the illustrator
and designer Paul Iribe. Mr. Iribe’s carved Mughal emerald, framed with
diamonds and sapphires and crowned with rays of diamond, sapphire and pearl,
was a strikingly modern piece — both Indian in inspiration and a precursor of
the Art Deco style.
“Mixing blue and green
stones was adventurous then in European jewelry,” Mr. Jaffer said. “Paul
Iribe’s wife, the actress Jeanne Dirys, was seen in all the Paris magazines
wearing that brooch.”
Mr. Thani commissioned
several Indian-inspired pieces for the collection from Joel Arthur Rosenthal,
who was known as JAR, the American-born jewelry designer working in Paris,
including a lapel brooch made with three central Asian Emeralds in an unusual
pencil shape, and an imposing pair of earrings with spinels and natural pearls
— two gems much favored in Mughal jewelry.
“These pieces opened a
new door in the collection to the work of contemporary designers who share a
passion for India and for historic gems,” Mr. Jaffer said.
Other examples of
extraordinary contemporary craftsmanship in the collection are several pieces
by Viren Bhagat, a craft jeweler based in Mumbai, India.
One piece by Mr. Bhagat,
a breathlessly limpid diamond brooch, adorned with tassels, is set with
10-carat D-flawless Golconda diamonds in flat cut, thoroughly modern in its
execution yet squarely in the tradition of turban ornaments and typical of
Mughal taste.
Mr. Bhagat’s gemstones
are set in platinum, employing a European technique imported into India that
allows the stones to appear to float without a visible setting.
“Working mainly with
platinum allows us to use a minimal amount of metal to bring out the motif with
gemstones rather than shaping metal to the form,” Mr. Bhagat wrote in an email
from Mumbai. “This gives our work lightness, and the result — Indian-inspired
jewelry with European execution.”
For all the fineness of
his own work, Mr. Bhagat says there has been a loss of skill in jewelry making
in India, a decline that he attributes to a lack of modern patronage.
“Today’s clients refuse
to wait as long and pay as much for quality as the aristocrats of old did,” he
said. “Quality takes time, and costs money. That is the true luxury of
artisanal jewelry-making which is being forgotten.”
Yet, if the craft of
jewelry making has declined, the taste for fine jewelry clearly has not. A
collector looking to acquire important Indian jewelry today will find that
market prices have soared in the past few years.
In 2011, an imperial
Mughal necklace made of polished spinels, three of them engraved with the names
of emperors, was sold for 4.58 million Swiss francs, or $5.04 million, blowing
away its estimates of $1.6 million to $2.5 million, in a Christie’s sale in
Geneva.
A mid-18th century
Mughal turban ornament of diamonds, emeralds and enamel was sold amid frenzied
bidding in another Christie’s Geneva auction in 2012 for a record price of 4.45
million francs.
“Indian jewelry appeals
to the connoisseur with scholarly taste, but also to those who love its
improbability,” Mr. Jaffer said.
“At these price levels,
the Indian jewelry market is comparable to that of high-end real estate,” he
added. “It is accessible to only a small number of investors.”
