FEATURE

MOTHER OF ALL MANEK

Baba Peter Lee is totally beadazzled!

o you think youve seen beadwork? If you are convinced its hard to top the kind of crazy beaded tablecloths that Penang Peranakans commissioned, well think again. After all, we are merely talking about several square feet of rather ordinary faceted Bohemian glass beads, not precious stones. On 24 March, 2011 Sothebys in New York sold a magnificent beadwork canopy (yes, canopy!) made of, well, some glass beads, but more importantly, over 500,000 Basra pearls as well as diamonds, sapphires, rubies and emeralds. Commissioned by Khande Rao Gaekwar, the Maharaja of Baroda and made between 1865 to 1870, this manek-ficently opulent canopy was part of a suite that included four pearl carpets (one sold for over US$5 million at auction in Doha), which was intended as an adornment for the Prophets tomb in Medina. The ruler, a great collector of diamonds and rare gems, died before the ensemble could be completed. It has remained in the royal collection ever since, spending the later part of the 20th century in Monaco, where it was kept by the late Maharani Sita Devi, the enigmatic second wife of a later Maharaja, Pratap Singh Gaekwar. The royal couple smuggled most of Barodas crown jewels out of India, including a magnificent strand of diamonds with the Star of the South (128.48 carats) and the English Dresden (76.5 carats). The canopy was only recently exhibited at the Maharaja exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, and its sale so soon after a high-profile exhibition raised some eyebrows, but still not as many as the astonishing price: US$2,322,500. k

Photograph courtesy of Sothebys. ISSUE 43 2011 | 13 ISSUE 2011 | 13