Many happy returns
It seems the tide has turned, and oriental arts are now sailing their way back home
PERIOD dramas on the TV go down well chez nous. Unlike the Business Manager (Mrs P) though, I’m less concerned about the storyline – although Poldark has had me gripped – I’m more interested in the scenes set inside homes, whether they be castles, mansions or hovels.
Spotting bloopers is one viewing pastime. Not simple stuff like someone fluffing their lines. Mine are much more fun, spotting objects that weren’t around in the period in which the drama is set.
The most famous is probably the Starbucks coffee cup in a Game of Thrones scene (yes, it happened). My personal best is the 20th century Royal Doulton tableware being used at an 18th-century dinner party.
Seeing the props in their historical and social context is particularly rewarding. ITV’s Beecham House, set in India in the late 18th century, promised much but didn’t quite deliver to the level I’d hoped.
Nevertheless, it did much to shed light on the organisation through which many of India’s and Asia’s treasures found their way to Europe…by fair means and foul.
The Honourable East India Company (HEIC) also known as the East India Company, or the British East India Company, was not as wholesome as we’d like to imagine.
It was co-founded in 1600 by Sir John Watts (c1554-1616) son of a Hertfordshire shipowner and merchant, specifically to trade alongside the Dutch United East Indies Company (VOC) for commodities such as cotton, silk, salt, spices, saltpetre, tea and, of course, the highly lucrative opium, which would play such a dramatic role centuries later.
There was never any intention to seize power and establish the British Empire, but with the vast Mughal India beginning to decline and crumble into provinces and small states, the 18th century saw the merchants step in to take control.
Backed by the British government, which passed an Act in 1773 to bring the HEIC under its direct control, the company raised its own private armies, defeated French attempts to muscle in on trade, and began to exercise military power and administration of the country under its governors and puppet leaders.
By 1803, at height of HEIC rule in India, Britain had built the East India Docks in east London to cope with the vast amount of goods flooding in – the tea trade alone was said to be worth £30 million annually.
However, it ended with the Indian Great Rebellion of 1857 and an Act the following year giving the Crown direct control of the country and the establishment of the British Raj.
It took two opium wars to gain similar trade concessions with China,
but after colonising Hong Kong in 1841, (and we know what’s happening there currently) the flow of Chinese goods and treasures soon echoed that of India.
The beneficiaries were the merchants and their customers who built imposing London homes and country estates decorated with antiques and fine art from Mughal and Qing dynasties.
At a less exclusive level, countless soldiers and sailors, civil servants, administrative officials, clerks stationed there and travellers also brought back souvenirs of their own.
Now today’s wealthy Indian and Chinese businessmen and benefactors looking to repatriate what they regard as their heritage, seemingly lowly works of art have seen dramatic price rises in recent times.
Porcelain, jade, silver, jewellery, carpets, silk, paintings, lacquer, the list is long, but perhaps less well known are the charming pieces illustrated, which are known collectively as Vizagapatam, named after the port of the same name on India’s Coromandel Coast. Today called Visakhapatnam, it is the financial capital of the state of Andhra Pradesh.
In the days after an important trading centre was established by the Dutch in the early 17th century, an English textile factory was built in the late 1680s and the HEIC followed soon after, linking with the port of Canton in China and head office in London.
The most spectacular pieces of Vizagapatam, all retailed by the Dutch or English companies in either Madras or Calcutta, were reserved for the rich. They included bureau bookcases, tables, chairs, dressing tables and elaborate mirrors made from sandalwood or more rare tropical padauk wood (it resembles rosewood) and inlaid with ebony, ivory, teak and mother of pearl, carved with birds, animals and flowers.
At first, they copied the style of Dutch furniture, which the Indian craftsmen knew well from the commissions from merchants in the Netherlands, but English styles followed.
Shropshire-born Robert Clive of India (1725-1774), a military officer and HEIC official who established the company’s political control in Bengal, is known to have returned home with a fortune larger than anyone else’s.
Inventories of his house in
Berkeley Square and his mansions in Walcot, near Craven Arms and Claremont, Surrey, show many pieces of Vizagapatam.
Another rich custodian of Vizagapatam was Oxfordshire-born Warren Hastings (1732-1818) the first British Governor General of India from 1772-1785, who brought back a large collection of tables, cabinets, chairs and boxes for his town house in London’s prestigious Park Lane. He was later accused, but subsequently cleared, of corruption.
Soon Vizagapatam was being made and exported in smaller pieces to appeal to the less well-heeled. Pieces to look out for today include chess boards and chessmen, backgammon boards, tea chests and caddies, and other more plain lidded boxes and caskets, writing, sewing and work boxes, some modelled as miniature pieces of furniture, writing slopes and hand mirrors.
They dated generally from the mid-19th century and remain affordable given their charming but far less complex decoration when compared to grander pieces.
Inlays were replaced in the 19th century with sheets of materials such as bone, horn and porcupine quills, engraved with neo-classical designs of scrolling foliage and chequerboard picked out in black, the designs reminiscent of Tunbridgeware.
Among the most charming are work boxes modelled as a house or cottage, complete with central chimney, the roof carved to represent thatch and the exterior decorated with a door, windows, a post and rail fence and trees.
Beneath the hinged lid it is divided into compartments, some with lids, others padded as in cushions, while a small drawer extends from the base of the side of the house, but only when the roof is open and a small pin – often Indian silver – is removed.
Lucky collectors sometimes find this overlooked extra contains its original sewing tools, but be prepared to pay handsomely for the privilege of taking it home from an auction.