Putting a bid on it

Gandhinalia, an Indian pearl carpet, and Hebrew fugitive printed works from Kerala and Bombay figure in forthcoming auctions.

Times might well be bad enough for some people to have to hawk their family silver, but for some it’s also the opportunity to pick up the finest treasures in the market at a price that, while well extraordinary, might still justify the stakes. Interest in India is currently buzzing around a sale of Gandhi memorabilia — Bapu’s glasses, pocket watch, bowl, plate and sandals — that he is supposed to have gifted to a British family and which comes up for auction on March 4 and 5. Consigned by a private collector, they have several Indians in a tizzy over the attempt to bid and get them back to the country. Put up for sale by Antiquorum Auctioneers in New York, bidding for the works is expected to start at £30.

Whatever the Gandhinalia fetches, however, will pale in comparison to the rare pearl carpet of Baroda, coming up for auction at Sotheby’s inaugural Arts of the Islamic World sale in Doha on March 19. This astonishing carpet which was for a hundred years with the Baroda royal family and was first shown publicly at the 1902-03 Delhi Exhibition in England, was carried off to Monaco by the flamboyant Maharani Sita Devi, along with her cache of jewellery. It next made an appearance at the landmark 1985 exhibition India at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Never auctioned before, the carpet, it is believed, was commissioned by Kande Rao Gaekwad as a suitable gift for the tomb of Prophet Mohammad in Medina — a gift that was never made, as it turned out. According to the Sotheby’s catalogue, the carpet has been embellished with two million Basra seed pearls, while the design has been picked out with coloured glass beads, and the whole of it is encrusted and embellished with gold-set diamonds, and hundreds of sapphires, rubies and emeralds.

Bidding for this historic carpet is expected to begin at $5 million.

But even that’s nothing compared to what the finest private collection of Hebrew books and manuscripts from around the world, the Valmadonna Library Trust, is expected to fetch en bloc for its 11,000 works. Collected by the Italian Jack Lunzer and named after the village in Italy where it was housed, the collection is the primary source and world history of Jewish life and culture from the 10th to the early 20th century. It consists of Hebrew works from Italy, Holland, England, Greece, Eastern Europe, the Ottoman Empire, North Africa, China and India.

Though the prize work in the sale is a Pentateuch (Hebrew Bible) from 12th century England, it also has a fascinating collection of pamphlets and fugitive printing including periodicals from the Cochin Jews of Kerala and the Bene Israel Jews of Bombay (now Maharashtra). Hebrew printing in the subcontinent is supposed to have begun as a result of the arrival of the printing press in Calcutta along with the East India Company.

The Hebrew collection of the Valmadonna Library Trust, on view from February 9 to 19 at Sotheby’s, New York, is priceless. Now to see who puts a price to it — and how much.