Eastern treasures from Hawaii
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By Marilia Duffles Financial Times 5 March, 2004
Hawaii is a strange place to find ground zero for a campaign to promote the understanding of the Islamic arts,
but that's exactly where heiress Doris Duke, who died in 1993, chose to stage her posthumous battle.
From the extraordinarily ornate interiors of Shangri La, her tropical retreat now open to the public, to her collection of jewellery, currently on display at the Honolulu Academy of the Arts and going on to auction at Christie's New York this summer - and a generous endowment in her will for a series of lectures at the Honolulu Academy of Arts - Duke created an Islamic paradise in the bosom of the western world.
The only child of the tobacco-and-energy-baron James Duke, she inherited, at the age of 12, an estimated $100m fortune, as well as her father's zeal for amassing impressive symbols of wealth. Married at 22, Duke said she fell in love twice during her 10-month global honeymoon: first with the arts of the Middle East and India, and then with Hawaii, her last stop.
By the time her cruise ship arrived in Honolulu in August 1935, it was packed with Islamic treasures fit for gorgeous gardens and splendid spaces - all realised in Shangri La, the estate Duke built to house her collection. With gentle breezes and an unrivalled view of Diamond Head cascading into the turquoise Pacific, the $1.8m (in 1938) private enclave protected Duke from untrustworthy humans and, ironically, the Islamic art from the bombing during the Gulf and later Iraqi wars.
Duke's 3,500-piece collection represents not just the pre-eminent arts of the Islamic courts but also ethnographic tastes of craftsmen and the mercantile class, says Sharon Little, curator. Its diversity tracks Duke's travels, and the objects range from the early period of Islamic expansion (7th century) to works of the 20th century, including wood, paper, precious and semi-precious stone, glass, ceramics, metal and fibre.
Most items are from Iran (the only Islamic region not represented is sub-Saharan Africa) with ceramic vessels and tile panels comprising one fifth of the collection. There are Mina'i-type bowls made in medieval Iran, and 16th-century plates from Iznik, Turkey, reminiscent of Chinese blue-and-white ceramics. But the collection's centrepiece is the greyish-blue ceramic mihrab, a prayer niche dated May 12, 1265, traditionally set into the qibla, a wall that marks the direction of Mecca.
Mihrabs are rare because 19th-century excavations ended up dispersing them as fragments, making Shangri La one of the few places in the world where most of the pieces are still together, says Dr Stephen Little, director of Honolulu's Academy of Arts. This one, too, could have been shattered had it not been uninstalled right after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and protected in the basement till after the second world war.
Then there's the exceptional mid-19th-century Syrian room-interior of carved and painted wood panels and doors, amicably set off by the inlaid marble floor, fountain and seating, so evocative of Turkish baths you can practically feel the steam. Originally used by wealthy Damascus mercantile families to impress visitors over seven centuries, the room gained enormous value when the Metropolitan Museum accepted it as a gift from the Kevorkian Foundation in 1970.
East also meets west in the jewellery collection. Approximately 100 pieces amassed by Duke and her family are showcased chronologically (1860s to 1960s), including Belle epoch jewellery (a chatelaine gold mesh purse with diamonds) and "all-white" pieces from the late 1920s (a convertible Cartier diamond necklace). Not surprisingly, however, the principal part of her Islamic collection sparkles with Duke's fascination with India. Like Islamic art, Indian jewellery leaves no surface unadorned; witness the 19th-century diamond and gem Maharaja necklace and the 17th-century ruby-set floral clusters and 19th-century white sapphire and enamel gold belt from Jaipur.
Interest in Islamic art and jewellery has been very strong recently, as evidenced by a Christie's auction last year where an unexpected £1.79m was bid for a 17th-century Mughal emerald, gold and enamel wine cup (7cm), the highest price attained for an Indian jewel. Though a mihrab or room interior would not be likely to cross the threshold of an auction house these days, Duke's gem collection alone should send prices - and interest - sky high.
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