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| The end of patronage |
| Kishore Singh / New Delhi Dec 30, 2009, 00:58 IST |
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When East first met West, was it the start of the battle between brand vs local craftsmanship?
Watchmakers created an “Imperial Watch” for the maharajas, Jacques Cartier found a huge demand for pocket watches among India’s royal houses, the Nizam of Hyderabad ordered cufflinks to go with his Western suits. On his European trip, the maharaja of Bikaner had a list prepared of the errands he was to run while there, including, writes art historian Amin Jaffer, finding “soap samples in at least seven different colours; repair binoculars; source bed and table linen, sanitary fittings and railings suitable for the lake in the public park in Bikaner; and identify moulds for potato chips”.
While the interface may have begun as early as the eighteenth century, it was in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that it reached its apogee, as European travel became commonplace for the princes, and Western sophistication a way of life. While the public persona was critical — “turban, robes, shoes and the sword of state”, notes Joanne Punzo Waghorne, “from head to foot his accoutrements speak of royal power” of most maharajas — it was also a manifestation of the aspect of kingsip most implicit in divine ordinance, close to divinity itself.
Processions highlighted this, forest hunts were escapes into the jungle but never simple affairs, and weddings — often, multiple weddings, some of them for the express purpose of filling the state’s coffers — were the highest ceremonial celebrations. When the royal houses of Mewar and Amber came together in matrimony, the dowry included: “Two elephants laden with articles of silver, forty-five horses, one chariot, jewellery, utensils of gold and silver, twenty thousand rupees in cash, eight hundred ceremonial robes for men and 616 such [robes] for women. In addition, the bride was given jewellery, clothes, male and female slaves, and many other items in dowry.” This was in 1708; a little more than two centuries later, the ruler of Amber would demand, and get, a polo team, complete with crack players, from Marwar, in dowry!
Imagine how these kept the ateliers busy. The rulers were patrons of everything from impeccable but also highly ornamental jewellery, formal brocaded and embroidered robes, paintings, architecture, silver and gold objects, carpets, tapestries and the literally thousands of things that ritual court and palace life implied.
They cultivated artisans, set up special facilities for them (as a result of which cities such as Hyderabad and Jaipur, for instance, remain centres of handicrafts), imported artists and architects, masons and designers, weavers and carpet-makers from all over Asia and even Europe. As Rosemay Crill notes, “European visitors arriving at the courts of Indian rulers from the seventeenth century onwards were unanimously impressed by their material splendour.”
With India’s independence, many of the arts that went into disarray were those patronised almost exclusively by the maharajas. Even given India’s continuity in this tradition, many of them have disappeared into oblivion. And though a case might be made that their demise had been written when the Indian princes turned patrons for the new and exciting treasures they found or had customised in the West, the sheer weight of tradition and the high demand from both court and zenana kept the ateliers running — if not at full steam, at least comfortably well-nourished with commissions.
As for the Western commissions, Jaffer observes that the maharajas were ingenious at adapting what suited them. “As ever, in the Indian princely consumption of Western luxury goods, it is possible to see how India borrows, adapts and transforms from the outside in order to create something that is distinctive to the subcontinent.”
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