India Special Antiques Roadshow

Today, a bit of a first for the Antiques Roadshow.

We're celebrating a land that is far from Britain,

but whose history is interwoven with ours,

dating as far back as the 17th century -

the Indian sub-continent and, no, this isn't Delhi or Jaipur,

this is just round the corner from Wembley in north-west London.

Built in 1995, the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir,

or Neasden Temple as it's more commonly known,

was the first temple of its kind in the western world.

Every inch of it is encrusted with intricate Hindu carvings

and reliefs, from the floor right to the top of the domes.

Inside, within the inner sanctum of the temple, it's even more dazzling.

What's even more remarkable is that this entire temple

was created in India before being put together here.

Over 4,000 tonnes of the finest Bulgarian limestone

and Italian marble was shipped to India,

where battalions of sculptors

set about handcrafting all the pieces of this building.

At its peak,

over 1,500 stone carvers were working across west India.

A new mini-town sprung up just to house all the workers.

After two and a half years, 26,000 pieces of stone were numbered,

packed and shipped to London and then here,

they were assembled like a gigantic 3D jigsaw puzzle,

the largest weighing 5.6 tonnes,

the smallest just 50g.

As well as serving a congregation of over 40,000 Hindus

in the local area, this is also a busy hub of the Indian community.

Alongside the temple, this vast hall or haveli regularly hosts

thousands of people for celebrations and festivals.

Today, we've some surprising stories of India's rich history

and culture along with the odd Anglo-Indian revelation,

like did you know that Britain introduced India

to the custom of tea drinking, for example,

and helping us unfold these tales is Amin Jaffer,

a specialist in Indian antiques,

along with some of our regular Antiques Roadshow experts.

They're eager to see Indian-made objects brought along in response

to our appeal for family treasures

and, alongside the exciting items brought today,

we're also taking the opportunity

to revisit some fascinating Indian treasures

unearthed at recent Roadshows.

This wonderful tea service puts me in mind of Edward, Prince of Wales

going to India in 1876, representing his mother, Queen Victoria.

He had a wonderful trip, he was given so many presents

and his favourite was a silver tea service very like this.

When it came time to go home, they had to charter a special ship

to carry all his presents back to Britain.

So, where do you fit into this story?

I've always understood that this was a retirement present

to my grandfather when he returned from Madras,

having been there since the late 1890s until 1923.

He was director of a company in Madras called Spencer's

-who ran a large department store.

-Right.

I mean, Spencer's was one of the most famous

Indian department store chains.

I suppose it's a sort of Harrods,

selling mostly things for the British community

and this particular style of silver was known as Swami style,

and it was developed originally

by a company called Peter Orr and Sons

and Orr's became the great name in Madras, now Chennai,

for that particular type of ware

and that's exactly what Edward, Prince of Wales got.

He got an Orr service.

The style is 1860s to 1900 and this is just a great example.

We've got the tiger hunt round the top

and, here, we've got a wonderful series of scenes from village life.

There's a well, there's a man doing snake charming.

There's all sorts of little bits and pieces going on. Do you like it?

I do indeed, yes, I've always liked it.

-I've had tea out of that pot a number of times.

-That's very good.

I think it's a magnificent thing.

This style of ware, though made entirely for the British market

by Indian silversmiths, has actually become very desirable in India now.

People who buy this today are not people like you and me.

It's people in India who are buying back

the products of their historical culture.

A set like this,

somewhere between £3,000 and £6,000.

-Really?

-Yeah.

I'm surprised.

I'd have thought without the third nought on the end,

but I'm delighted to hear that.

Well, without the third nought, I'll take it home with me.

LAUGHTER

It's certainly not leaving my possession at the moment.

-I hope not, it's a great thing.

-Thank you very much indeed.

Indian silverwork is renowned the world over,

and sometimes it takes some fairly unusual forms,

as we've seen in previous episodes.

Well, this must qualify as one of the most tactile tea caddies

I've ever seen on the Antiques Roadshow.

It's made of a nut, the coco de mer.

The archaic name for this nut

actually translates as "beautiful buttocks".

-LAUGHTER

-Need I say more?

This is not just an elephant.

This is actually...

..an ink well,

which takes it into a new dimension.

This is a really useful, interesting and collectible object.

-I can tell you exactly where it comes from.

-Right.

It's covered in local symbols.

-Right.

-It comes from Kashmir.

-Right.

The bowl itself is based on what's called a kashkul,

which is a begging bowl which the Dervish monks used to carry

to collect alms from the locals.

This coco de mer has been found, sliced open

and given the most fantastic silver-plated mounts

to turn it from a nut into a two-division tea caddy.

I actually think that the mounts of this piece were made in India.

-It has some considerable value, too.

-Oh, right!

It would cost you about...

somewhere around the £4,000 mark.

Oh, right!

Have you any idea what something like this might be worth now?

-I thought perhaps £200, something like that.

-£200.

-I would say nearer £3,000 to £4,000.

-Good grief!

I think if I was putting this in an auction,

my estimate would be £3,000-£5,000.

My God!

Really?

No, I really didn't think that.

You think I'm a NUTCASE?

LAUGHTER

The inspiration for hosting a Roadshow

dedicated to Indian antiques

came about when we visited Walthamstow in East London

and Marc Allum fell for a pair of Indian artefacts.

Do you know, my entire 16-17 year career on the Antiques Roadshow,

there's one word I've been dying to use and that word is "palanquin".

And here I have a palanquin.

-In fact, I have two palanquins.

-Two indeed, yeah.

I've got an interest in Indian antiques

and I was just looking through an online auction site

and came across one of these and I thought it was rather bizarre

that these should appear online in the UK so I just had to have it.

Right, I mean, obviously, I know and you know

that they're for carrying people.

Afterwards, it only seemed apt to invite the owner, Rizwan Osman,

to bring other pieces from his collection of Indian antiques

to our Roadshow at Neasden.

What I really enjoyed about that day filming with you at Walthamstow

was that I very soon became aware

that you were quite a serious collector.

Well, I have an interest in Indian antiques in general

and I've been collecting for about 20 years now,

and it started when I saw pictures of the Delhi Durbar of 1903

and the pomp and splendour of the processions and the ceremony.

So one of the things that you've brought along was this motif

and it's a fabulous gold wire embroidered palmette,

a processional palmette,

and I can imagine that there would have been several of these

within the procession, held on big staffs.

And look at it glinting in the sunshine.

You can imagine a collection of these in processional use.

-They would have had an amazing impact, wouldn't they?

-Indeed.

And I think this is the most astounding ceremonial horse armour

and it's very intricate. It's... I say ceremonial,

because it's not actually a functioning armour as such.

It harks back to the days when Indian horses perhaps

would have had much more substantial armours in this sort of style.

Now, where did you buy this? How did you come across it?

I've been buying things from a dealer in Jaipur for some time

and he mentioned that he had this and I saw a couple of pictures

and thought, "I can't let the opportunity go,"

so I just had to have it.

Right, so it arrived in a cardboard box, did it?

It did, wrapped in newspapers and there it stayed

until about yesterday when I unwrapped it and finally saw it.

-So, really, this is the first time it's properly seen the light?

-Yes.

And it really is seeing the light, isn't it, cos look at it,

it's glinting magnificently.

It's interesting that you said you bought it from a dealer in Jaipur

because I actually essentially think that's exactly where it's from.

-Right.

-So, that ties in beautifully.

Look at the iconography, the work in it, these gilt finials here

and all this metalwork we're seeing, really,

it's almost certainly copper

and you've got some kind of slightly fancier gilded studs as well.

I think that this dates

from around about 1900 or the early 20th century.

That's my feeling with the style of the metalwork

and things like that.

And it would have been part

-of some magnificent processions, I know that.

-Sure.

I wonder how you're ever going to display this.

I'm wondering the same thing. One day, maybe.

Well, I think this...

And again this is, I think,

probably mid to late 19th century, something like that,

-I think that that is worth about £600 to £800.

-Right.

And I'd really love to know how much you paid for it. Would you tell me?

I paid £500 for it.

I think this is worth in the region of about £700 to £1,000 at auction.

Right.

-I hope you're quite pleased with that.

-I am, I am.

-Thank you very much, Riz.

-Thank you.

You know, in the wonderful world of jewellery,

much of what I see is actually not particularly colourful.

A diamond's a diamond - it's white.

Or a gold bracelet's a gold bracelet.

But these, the first thing that's worth pointing out

is just how extraordinarily colourful they are.

They are two standing figures and then there is a face here

and a face there.

First of all, let me know a little bit about where they came from.

My father bought them in the 1960s in an antiques shop in Old Welwyn.

He was particularly interested in them

because of the figure of Maharaja Ranjit Singh and, being a Sikh,

he was drawn to them and he bought them as a gift for my mother.

What would your father have paid for them in those days, do you think?

I think he paid about £20, £25.

OK. They're quite a pleasing shape. They're a teardrop.

They're mounted in silver with a miniature behind

with a circular top section with a miniature behind rock crystal.

Clearly, the interesting component here is the subject matter

because they're rather unusual. You said who this one is.

It's worth... Shall we just discuss this?

This figure here is Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the Lion of the Punjab.

This was one of the great men of the Sikhs.

This was the man who, if you like, gathered all the Sikhs together.

He was the first really important Sikh ruler, sort of 1790s period.

He didn't have a great start in life.

You may notice, if you haven't already done so,

that when you look at his face, he was blind in the left eye

because he developed smallpox as a small boy

and, actually, he's been painted with smallpox scars,

so they're beautifully done.

The execution of the painting is fabulous.

You know, we can pick up the highlights of the gold

here in the coat.

You can see the detail of the beards and the jewellery, the pearls.

Great, we like that.

Value - £20?

£800.

-Oh, right!

-Very potent symbolism and that's why I wanted to film them.

-Thank you!

-Thank you very much indeed.

Thank you very much, thank you.

Like those miniature paintings on the earrings,

it's often the detail of smaller Indian-made items

that catches the eye of our specialists,

making them into real objects of desire,

as we've seen at previous Roadshows.

My family came from India.

Which explains the retailer,

-Walters & Co of Calcutta.

-Yes.

It's a lovely thing.

I really like it. I'm going to take it off its strap.

What do you think is unusual about that?

-Well, obviously, the little cover for the winder...

-Exactly.

Absolutely right and we can unscrew that

and access the winding crown there.

This is just so charming.

It looks like a little English country cottage.

You've got this lovely little garden

with a fence around the edge, which is superb.

It's so beautifully made.

I mean, how they get the veneer of this ivory flat and you can see

when you open it up that it's not solid ivory, of course,

this lovely little thing.

When I first glimpsed it, I thought it was going to be a tea caddy.

No, it's a little sewing box, of course,

and we know where this is from - it's from India.

My goodness me! I do get excited

when I see a very large gemstone.

Do you know what it is?

I think it's a sapphire. I'm not sure.

-It's my father's.

-Right.

-Um...

And he calls it the Maharaja's Hatpin.

The case, I see there, is very nicely hallmarked in 14 carat gold.

Wow!

Well, I'm sure most wristwatch jewellers would very happily

pay a minimum of £1,500 to £2,000 for it.

Wow, that's lovely!

They're made in the 18th century.

-It's so rare to find one on the Antiques Roadshow.

-Really?

I absolutely adore it.

It's got everything, it's a perfect little house.

Well, if I was putting this into an auction,

I would say it's worth...

at the very least, between £5,000 to £8,000.

Ooh, golly!

Wow!

This weighs about 90 carats

and it's going to be in the region of about £12,000 to £15,000.

Very good.

Well, this is a fascinating object.

It's, of course, a Jain devotional sculpture -

a portable altar from the Jain religion,

which emerged in India about 500 BC.

How did you come to own this rather esoteric work of art?

Well, I've always liked India and Indian culture and philosophy.

I particularly like Jain pieces.

They have a special sort of spiritual quality to them

and, often, I find pieces are inscribed,

they have an inscription on the side.

Well, this piece indeed has an inscription running

all the way around the base and it's a dedication.

-What's fascinating is that it's actually dated.

-Ah!

So if we convert the date to our calendar,

-it brings us to about 1634.

-Oh, wow, great!

So it's almost 400 years old

and Jainism was built on the precept of non-violence

and when we think of Buddhism and Jainism,

they emerge out of the same root, which is the sanctity of all life -

human life as well as animal life as well as plant life.

For example, Jain adherents would not pluck fruit from a tree

because the fruit is a living being

and the religion is really defined by 24 teachers,

known as tirthankaras,

and here we have a depiction of the 14th tirthankara.

He's standing in a yogic meditative position - very austere,

incredibly strong and, all around him,

seated in more of a classic yogic lotus position, are 13 figures.

Yes.

-And it's a portable altar.

-Yes, this...

I'm not sure what you call it, but this surround here lifts up

and so that comes out and the figure itself just slides out

so there you go, you've got the three pieces

so you can carry it around.

It's quite a convenient thing that would have been used

in a domestic context for private ritual and for private worship.

-Oh, OK.

-It's a fascinating object.

In terms of a value, do you have an idea,

a sense of what it might be worth?

I know what I paid for it! Whether that's the same thing, I don't know.

I'm trying to remember. About £3,000, I think I paid.

Well, I think, at auction today,

-we'd put an estimate of about £6,000 to £8,000 on it.

-OK, good.

And I dare say that if we were selling it in a New York auction,

we might have an even higher estimate because we have

such a strong collecting base in America for Jain art today.

Great, well, that's fantastic.

-Congratulations, it's a great thing.

-Thank you.

Well, approaching me almost silently is this FANTASTIC vehicle.

Look at it glinting in the sunlight.

Wonderful! I think, probably, that's about it.

SHE GASPS

-You lucky man!

-I am indeed!

-I'm going to let you out this side

cos, actually, you haven't got a door.

I haven't, there's only three doors.

This is absolutely glorious.

And I have a wonderful history to go with it as well.

Well, that's the icing on the cake.

-First of all, it's a 40/50.

-It is.

-The 40/50 is what became known as the Silver Ghost.

-That's right.

And even though it hasn't got a Spirit of Ecstasy mascot

on the front, we know it's a Silver Ghost.

-I have a special mascot!

-You do!

Just explain what it is that you've got here, because this looks...

I'll put my specs on.

This is the original Rolls-Royce factory chassis cards,

detailing who bought the car - the Maharaja of Jodhpur.

The coach builder - Barker and Company.

How much he paid for it - £1,900!

Wow!

-And the date in... It was delivered in 1925.

-Yes.

Well, the average wage in 1925 was £5 a week

so that's about seven years' worth of earnings. Incredible!

So let's talk about the Maharaja of Jodhpur.

He was a mad keen polo player, wasn't he?

He was, and a mad keen car collector.

-OK, so this is part of his stable of Rolls Royces.

-That's right.

This is my car, with the spread eagle mascot.

Mascot on the top.

And this is the Maharaja at roughly that age, I suppose, in the 1920s.

Let's just talk for a minute about Rolls-Royce

and the Indian maharajas

cos they rather took a shine to them, didn't they?

They did. They imported a lot of Rolls-Royce cars

and nearly every maharaja is competing with the other ones

to have the best and the biggest and the most opulent.

So that was a huge market for Rolls-Royce

and I suppose that there needed to be something

to differentiate your Rolls-Royce

from the maharaja next door

and the Maharaja of Jodhpur, of course,

chose the spread eagle mascot as his motif, really.

Yes, that's right.

It's a fabulous car.

There are some things to say about the 40/50, the Silver Ghost,

which is that the market is not what it was,

but I hope that is not going to be news to you.

As a three-door version, I'd put it at between £70,000 and £90,000.

-Thank you very much.

-Pleasure.

It's been such a treat, thank you so much for bringing it in.

Thank you very much.

And I will listen for it purring its way out later on.

Amin Jaffer, it's great to have you here today

as a specialist in Indian art.

We've seen quite a collection of antique Indian objects today.

-Is there a real interest in India in collecting antiques?

-Absolutely.

The interest in India is burgeoning.

We have auction houses that have developed,

international auction houses, to private museums, foundations.

It's a booming market, both within India and internationally.

And what about art and antiques from the British colonial era?

-What's the feeling about those?

-Well, it's a really good question.

I think it's fallen between two stools

because it's not completely British, nor is it completely Indian,

but a whole separate school of collecting has developed.

People who are fascinated by the cultural exchange

and the fusion, we see an entire change in style

and production in India and there are museums

and collections devoted to British India.

And what is your particular area of interest, would you say?

I love all of it, but I would say Indian jewellery

is a big passion for me and I love modern Indian paintings as well.

And obviously here in this setting,

-we're seeing some of the best of Indian craftsmanship.

-Absolutely.

What's interesting is the continuity of craftsmanship.

The fact is you can reproduce, in the late 20th century,

a temple in a style hundreds of years earlier.

India's still a place where things are made by hand.

We still have a strong engagement with production

and that's one of the things that makes Indian art so special.

These are incredibly delicate

and very intricate and very beautiful.

Now, how did you get them?

They belonged to my grandparents, who were living in India,

and it's probable that they were in the family before that

because my family's been in India for a couple of hundred years.

-A couple of hundreds years?

-Yes.

-Wow, that is a long time.

I think that's very likely

because that fits with what I think about them,

which is that they were done between 1820 and 1840

and they were done in Delhi or nearby.

-That would make sense, yes.

-That fits?

-Yes, that fits.

So, we're looking at a very grand procession,

an elaborately-caparisoned elephant

with a very important person in the howdah

and I'm pretty sure that this is the Emperor Akbar II.

Now, he was the penultimate Mughal emperor

and the last flickerings of the great dynasty, really,

and you can just discern his features,

although there's a bit of damage around in the sky, which is a shame.

But the rest of it's in spanking condition and it conforms -

as do these, which we'll talk about in a minute - to an earlier type.

There was more a less a sort of factory.

They're hand-done, but a factory churning out these images

-and they were for export.

-Yes.

Now, these two, I think, are both of the same woman.

An extremely beautiful woman and, of course,

she's about the most famous Indian woman that there is.

-I'm pretty sure it's Mumtaz Mahal.

-Gosh!

For which the Taj Mahal was built, of course,

as a funereal monument, I think we'd call it that?

It's an expression of grief in marble.

It's a most beautiful thing and this is the very beautiful -

"the most beautiful", that's what her name meant -

girl that it was built for, his favourite of three wives.

I particularly like this one,

because it looks like there's a storm breaking behind her.

It's got that dark, lowering sky

and yet her face is brilliantly lit

and you have a feel of the summer sun peeking through under the clouds

and the light almost coming from her.

-It's rather effective.

-Yes, she's so beautiful. I really love them.

Lovely things.

They've been in your family forever

and I don't suppose you know what they're worth.

I haven't the slightest idea, no.

Well, this one of the procession of Akbar II,

if it hadn't been damaged would have been £2,000-£3,000,

but, unfortunately, with the damage,

I think I've got to put it more like 1,000, maybe just under.

-It can be repaired, though. It can be restored.

-Can it?

There are some very clever people.

You probably wouldn't even notice if it was done.

And the two of Mumtaz I think are so sweet.

I mean, she was this kind of ideal of beauty so it's like Lady Di,

you know, you'd have lots of images of Lady Di.

It's exactly the same idea.

She's a type of beauty and you do see them

and they'll quite reliably fetch about £1,000 each.

Well, well! The main thing is to know what they are.

That's wonderful, thanks very much.

-Not at all, they're really nice.

-Thank you.

A lot of people assume that we don't see much

or many pieces of Indian furniture

but, in this case, with these tables,

we seem to see hundreds of them, whether in the West Country,

in the Midlands or Scotland,

there were so many of these tables brought over.

How did you find this table?

I was having a look around Portobello Market.

-I saw it and I just had to... It was an impulse buy, really.

-Right.

I'm trying to get an Indian theme in the house with tables such as this.

This is the centrepiece of the house.

So, when these tables were brought over,

they were shipped over as flatpacks

because they wanted to get as many in the boats sent over

to Britain, over to the West, hence that's why we see so many.

They were made in the Punjab area.

They came over in the late 19th century.

Liberty's was selling them and, when Liberty's was selling them,

they popularised them.

One would like to paint the picture of it in the 19th century

in a gentleman's smoking room with silk hangings and screens

and banquettes and everything like that

and they'd be laying down or sitting down as though they were in India.

The wood is a hard wood called sheesham.

It's a very, very dense wood, but it's the way it's been inlaid,

it's beautiful.

It is inlaid with bone and it's also inlaid with ivory

and what I like about this particular one, which, to me,

breaks the rules, is when we look in the front, it has a drawer.

-And to have a drawer is, to me, an unusual feature.

-Yes.

Is that the reason why you bought it?

Yes, that was one of the reasons, plus the inlay work on the top.

The colour and condition is brilliant.

In my opinion, it's a quality example.

That's what you should aim for

so I'm quite happy to put a value on this

between £1,200 and £1,500.

Great, thank you. Thank you very much.

One of the joys of Indian furniture is the sheer richness of decoration,

and that's been apparent on every piece we've seen on the Roadshow.

It's a fascinating coffer and I'll tell you why,

because I've seen plenty of these over the years

and, fundamentally, they're usually covered in these fabulous brass

and copper plaques with all these kind of motifs and symbols,

but there's something very different about this one,

and you have to look very closely.

It has these studs and these studs are very special

because they're East India Company buttons and they're dated.

My great-grandfather was a sea captain

and he sailed in the 1860s through to the end of the 19th century.

That figures, yeah.

And went as far as the South Pacific and South America by the long route.

Is that where you thought this might have been from?

We always imagined it came somewhere from the Far East.

Not specifically India, but that's an interesting...

That's exactly what it is, probably south India.

It belonged to a great-aunt of mine and came from north India.

It's called a north Indian mantle.

She kept it to the early '50s,

and it was passed on to my father who was a publican

and that used to have pride of place in several pubs that he managed.

What, with all the glasses and...

All the glasses on it, yeah, and that's where it was.

And, of course, it has the Dutch East India Company acronym,

VOC, on it. That is absolutely superb.

Of course, we all know

that they were one of the first multinationals.

The Dutch government basically brought all of those

merchants together, those spice merchants together

who were competing against each other and they nationalised them.

The reason I quite like this

is not because so much it's a piece of furniture,

but it's that I buy boxes that are carved in exactly the same style

which were made for the English market.

It's got a teaky look to it,

but I actually think it's a type of rosewood.

-It's very hard and dense, isn't it?

-Yes, very solid.

You must know cos you've probably picked it up and tried to move it.

The condition, cos it's a little bit sore in places...

-Has that happened over the years?

-That's happened over the years.

I suppose, in the bar, people threw things at it.

What kind of pub were you in?!

And I think at auction, putting all those things together,

this is going to be worth £2,000 to £3,000.

Very good. Interesting, thank you.

Something like this...

generally would make about £1,200 to £1,500

because it's very useful, it's small, it's manageable.

If this was the side of an English sideboard,

nobody would be able to lift it.

As it is, it's worth between £1,200 and £1,500,

but when this is fully restored, I would put a value...

-..about £2,500 on this, plus.

-Lovely!

-Thank you very much!

-Thank you.

You have a connection with India, Rupert, yourself,

but you only remembered it last night.

Yes, sadly, I'm a bit like that.

Do you know what it is? It's this amazing recipe book

that I've got in my library that my mother gave me.

It came down her side of the family to somebody called Benjamin Sealy,

which was my grandmother's married name.

I think they were doctors, so perhaps he was a doctor in India,

-and it's 1767, so that's seriously early.

-Wow!

And we've worked out,

with the help of a chap in the temple who speaks Tamil,

that it must have been from near Madras

and so if you look through it, there are several Indian recipes here.

There's a receipt for chutney and you see here,

you've got the names in Tamil of the ingredients here in English.

So let's just list them - chillies, dry - sultanas - tamarinds -

mango, green - ginger - almond - sugar - garlic - salt - vinegar.

Sounds pretty good.

Yeah, and on the right, you've got "bazaar weights" -

they're the equivalent of the English weights here -

and then the date of 1864,

so it's clear that different members of my family have put recipes in,

right the way from 1767 to 1864.

And what else have you got in here?

Well, you see, like a lot of these early recipe books,

it's also got cures.

I don't know if you've ever suffered from piles,

but there's a sure-fire remedy here if you have.

I'm not quite sure how you apply them, but here...

"For the piles"...

Oh, swiftly followed by a recipe for almond cheese cakes!

Well, you mustn't mix them up, of course!

So, what does it say? It's quite hard...

"It is recommended as having cured..."

Judge Epo, I think, or Tipo,

"after much cost to no purpose on other medicines."

"Take it when going to bed and rising." There you are.

It's there should you ever need it. Well, I think you need to find out

-more about your connection to India, by the sounds of it.

-I will try.

This is a very, very interesting ceramic figure, a Parian figure.

Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy, who was born in the late 18th century,

so I want you to tell me how you come to have it.

Years gone by, we used to collect anything and everything

and go round all the antique fairs we could

and this was in an antiques fair in Exeter, probably 14 years ago or so.

Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy, born in the late 18th century

and his parents died when he was very young.

He was little more than a street child, to be honest with you,

but he was a very forward-thinking young man

who basically saw a future in trading

and he essentially started trading cotton,

but he managed to build up a small and thriving industry

which later got bigger and bigger and bigger.

Now, the other interesting thing about him

was that he basically was the first Indian in essence to be knighted

and to become a baronet and if we look very carefully -

you may not have noticed this - on that medallion on his chest

is a very light profile of Queen Victoria.

Now, what do you know about him?

Not a great deal,

only that he was an incredible guy that made his fortune

and gave a lot of it away and built hospitals, schools, museums.

And even an art school in Mumbai or what was Bombay then.

Now, that's interesting because this statue itself is actually in Mumbai.

Now, this copy would, in fact,

have actually been taken from a photograph

and that photograph appeared in the Illustrated London News

and, on the back, it's marked Copeland.

Copeland were a big manufacturer of Parian,

their Parian figures are very well collected.

They particularly specialised in notable people from history,

but what I said to you earlier about this particular figure

is I've never, ever seen one in the flesh before.

There appear to be very, very few of them around

and I don't think Copeland made very many of them.

Now, what did you pay for this?

Well, my wife actually paid for it for her Christmas present

and we think it was between £70 and £80.

OK, well, that was not bad.

In this condition, it's probably worth about £600 to £800.

That's still very good! I'm pleased with that.

It's a great object, but the story behind it is amazing.

Yes, a wonderful story.

Of all the notable Indian names that have popped up at the Roadshow,

there can't be any more important than Mahatma Gandhi

and we discovered he actually visited the area

near one of our venues in a remarkable story

that came to light a few years ago.

These are my two grandparents, Percy Davies and Kathleen,

and my grandfather owned three cotton mills and, in 1931,

he knew Gandhi was going to come over to England,

and he wanted to invite Gandhi to come up to the cotton mills

and look at the effects of the boycott the Indian government

was putting on the Lancashire cotton mills,

look at the effect on the workers.

It was causing unemployment

and so he came to stay in my grandparents' house.

-So he stayed there?

-Yes, he slept in my father's bedroom.

The other one, I like very much this picture

because, of course, this is about the change of idea.

Here is Gandhi meeting mill workers' families

and he could see the hardships that his policy was causing.

Now, what's this?

-That's the letter from Gandhi.

-Signed by Gandhi.

That's a wonderful thing. So, this is after he's stayed.

"I have delayed too long in thanking you

"and your husband for your wonderful kindness to me

"and all my party whom you received as guests

"in your beautiful farmhouse last Saturday and Sunday."

So he stayed for the weekend.

"I shall not forget the peace and beauty of that Sabbath,

"and I deeply hope that its results

"may lead to permanent goodwill and friendship."

I think it's a great story.

I think it's probably, to a collector, worth £5,000.

In Indian history, this is important.

-Indians are great collectors.

-Yes.

-They would all buy this back now.

It's their history as well as our history.

So, you have this maquette,

this preparatory bronze,

for what is arguably the most famous image of Gandhi,

the statue in Tavistock Square

and I think it was unveiled by Harold Wilson, was it not?

-Harold Wilson, yes.

-And it's now a place of pilgrimage.

I see it from time to time,

and there's quite often flowers in front of it.

Yeah, that was the whole idea,

that when Indians first came to England to live,

the first thing they would do would be go to Tavistock Square

and put flowers as a thank you for a safe journey

or having arrived finally and on his birthday,

there's a pilgrimage goes into Tavistock Square

of the Indian League and other dignitaries

and they lay all these flowers around him.

Every year, they do this.

It's rather thrilling to think

your aunt, Fredda Brilliant, the Polish sculptress,

has created such an emotive, almost divine image like that, isn't it?

Yes, yes.

Well, I think that this, as a one-off piece, must be worth...

..given its significance in the history

of the representation of this man, £20,000.

Yes.

Thank you.

We've kept our Roadshow filming to the outside of Neasden Temple

because, inside, there are regular Hindu ceremonies.

BELL RINGS

We were given the chance to discreetly film

one of the rituals when the deities are woken and prayers offered.

The arti, or ceremony of light is one of the most important

and is performed five times throughout the day.

It involves members of the congregation

receiving blessings infused within the flames.

Neasden Temple is so renowned

that priests from India regularly come to take part.

The temple and ceremonies are free and open to everyone,

attracting visitors from all over the world.

Well, this is an extremely desirable painting.

It is, of course, a sequence from the great Hindu epic The Ramayana,

which is a mythic story.

It's really a battle of good and evil, isn't it,

and, in the course of the epic,

we have lots of episodes in which wondrous things happen.

Can you tell us a little bit more about it?

Yes, this is from what's known as the Yuddha Kanda

or the battle chapters of The Ramayana

and this shows the demon Kumbhakarna,

who is the younger brother of Ravana, who is cursed with a spell

that he sleeps for six months of the year

and then, because Ravana is losing the battle,

he sends all these demons to wake him up

cos he was a mighty warrior

and this shows all the demons trying to wake him up.

Someone is kind of banging the drums,

someone is pulling his ears,

but what happens is nothing wakes him up

and, finally, they drive 1,000 elephants over his body.

Once that happens, he feels like someone is giving him

a nice massage or something and he wakes up

so this painting depicts that episode from The Ramayana.

How did you come by this painting?

Well, I've been interested in collecting artworks

related to classical literature

and this I got from an old Italian collector

who had acquired them in India in the 1940s.

It's a great quality work of art.

What I really love is the freshness of the colours,

probably painted by an artist in the generation

after the master painter Nainsukh, working in northern India,

we would say, in the second half of the 18th century.

And highly desirable today in the market. What did you pay for it?

I think at the most about £10,000 or £7,000, something like that.

-I can't quite remember.

-Well, you've done very well.

If we had a work like this at auction,

we'd put an estimate of about £40,000 to £60,000 on it

and we have seen works from this series go for over £100,000.

-So, on a good day, you might achieve that type of result.

-Thank you.

Thank you for sharing it. It's a fantastic thing.

We often see fabulous old Indian artwork,

but, recently, more modern works have been coming through our door.

Well, some people may think this is a bit of a racy subject

to be brought to a cathedral

so we have these beautiful cavorting ladies

by an Indian artist. Tell me a little bit about him.

-His name was Avinash Chandra.

-Mm-hm.

He moved to England in the late '50s

and my grandad met him in the early '60s.

He was living in Guildford, didn't have much money

and he wanted some chairs from my grandad's design shop

and they exchanged the painting for the chairs.

That's interesting

because there were a number of struggling artists,

especially from India,

who were living in this country from the 1960s.

Probably the most famous is a chap called Souza.

As you can see, it's signed up here Souza and dated 1963.

-Do you know who Souza was?

-I know he's Indian

and I think brought up in Bombay,

first exhibition 1949 and died just after 2000 in Mumbai

so same place, different name,

but spent 20 years in this country or even more so...

Yes, about 20 years

and then he went to New York after that before going back to India.

So, there's no whiff of the colonial about this at all?

The fact that his first exhibition was 1949 means he's...

Post-Raj, post-partition.

And, of course, he was at art school then, he was in Mumbai,

as it's now called, and there he founded almost singlehandedly

a new movement called the Progressive Art Movement.

Well, I think it's incredibly nice

and because the Indian's market's changed so dramatically,

if you'd brought it to me in 1963,

-I have to say I'd have probably said £100.

-Mm-hm.

But today, I think this is worth sort of £5,000 to £7,000.

-Oh, my God!

-Not bad?

-No, that's brilliant.

What they were trying to do was bring in outside influences

from all over the world.

They weren't looking towards Britain and the Raj,

but they wanted at last, finally,

to establish a new mode of expression that is purely Indian,

that is significantly nationalistic

and, for that reason, now, Indians look at him

really as their first painter, their first truly Indian painter.

I think if this was at auction, I think it would be estimated

at something between £60,000 and £80,000 and if it was retail,

it would probably fetch about £100,000. It really would.

Well, certainly, if the place burns down,

it was always going to be the thing I rescued first.

I might come back for my partner, but I'd take the Souza.

RUPERT LAUGHS

It's a terrific picture.

It's such a beautiful and tranquil place here,

and one of the most extraordinary things about it

is because it had to be constructed according to ancient texts,

there could be no steel reinforcement

to hold this whole place up.

That's right.

It's been constructed using marble and limestone,

so we use limestone outside and marble inside

and, like you said,

it's been built according to the Shastras

or the scriptures of architecture,

the Shilpa Shastras,

and they state the way the mandir should be facing,

the way the devotees should be facing,

the way the construction should take place -

everything is written and that's how we've performed

and built this mandir.

You must have had a bit of a job

persuading the building regulation people here,

I would have thought, about that?

Yes, it was a challenge, but it's just a matter of convincing them

that this is going to be built and staying for 1,000 years.

Another wonderful thing about this place

is that it was built by volunteers, so how did that work?

Obviously, we had the skilled craftsmen to finish everything off,

making sure that everything was right.

The architects were here, the specialists were here,

but it was just the volunteers who slaved literally

because of their passion to please God

and make this a phenomenal building

and it was an absolute once-in-a-lifetime opportunity

and everybody grasped it with two hands.

-Well, you certainly succeeded.

-Thank you very much.

-Thank you.

Although this is the first time we've visited an Indian temple,

parts of other temples have visited the Roadshow in the past.

I was digging in the back garden.

We'd bought a house and it was very overgrown at the back and...

I came across this.

It was absolutely covered, so I gave it a good clean.

What is a piece of eastern Indian Hindu art...?

And, let me tell you, this is 12th century.

What's it doing buried in your garden?

I've got no idea, except that the house was built in the 1840s.

Perhaps somebody who lived there travelled around.

Let's have a good look at it,

because the most prominent surviving part of it is this huge lotus

and next to it, we have the earring of what would have been

a large deity and because of the lotus,

I think this must be Surya, who is basically the sun god

and of course the lotus comes up from the mud of a pond.

As soon as it comes through the blackness

and senses the sunlight, it blossoms,

so you've got this lovely petal depiction.

What's it worth? Find me another one.

I'm going to say...

£2,000 to £3,000.

Very nice!

Well, for something dug up from the garden,

it's better than rhubarb, isn't it?

Yeah, it's fantastic. Thank you.

Do you know, you two have really made me work

to get these here, lugging them all the way from your car.

They're really interesting things. Where did you get them?

They came out of a house that we sold about four years ago,

-actually, and they were in a porch.

-She just chiselled them off.

I just chiselled them off the porch.

-You did not chisel them off the porch.

-I did.

-So you're a vandal?

-Well, not really.

-They belonged to me, so I took them with me.

-Excellent, excellent.

I mean, they really are very interesting

and they are quite old, actually.

If you go back in history,

Alexander the Great marched into India in, I think it was, what,

325 BC and he took a huge retinue of people with him,

including craftsmen and sculptors, and a lot of them settled.

These pieces here were made in a kingdom which was called

the Gandhara Kingdom and, by about the second century AD,

they had developed very much their own style of art.

What you find is you find that

the sort of Greco-Hellenistic sculptors,

their style had become mixed with Buddhist sculpture

and so you find really strange things happening in the art.

Have a look at this.

We've got a figure here,

-a Buddhist figure here with a halo behind, yeah?

-Yes.

-And we've got somebody here who looks like a Roman soldier.

-Yes.

I mean, this one here,

the head is like a sort of Indian bodhisattva.

The robes are like something you'd see on Hellenistic sculpture,

something in ancient Rome.

It's really curious and, yes, they have a value.

I reckon it was worth chipping them off.

Don't say it like that!

This little one here,

I think in auction today is probably perhaps £400 to £600.

This one, maybe 1,000. This one, maybe £2,000, £2,500.

That's fantastic. Really good!

They're fantastic things and, you know what,

if I'm really nice, I might lug them back to your car for you.

-That would be great.

-Thank you!

So who is this gorgeous and powerful-looking figure?

He's Tipu Sultan, about 1796 or 1797.

Where does it hang?

It hangs in a members' bar in the Oriental Club in London.

And when did you get it?

We got it in 1848, so it was given to us

quite early on in the club's history.

The club started in 1824,

so a family gave it to us about that time.

So why have we got an Oriental Club in London?

We've got an Oriental Club in London

cos army officers from the East India Company came to London

and they felt a little bit that they weren't welcome

in the very smart London clubs.

-Slightly out of place.

-Slightly out of place.

They had a friend - the Duke of Wellington.

He was one of them and he said, "Start your own club,"

and then he gave them a famous piece of advice - "Buy the freehold."

-A sensible man, that Duke.

-Yeah, very sensible.

So, Tipu Sultan, he was ruler in south India.

His capital was Seringapatam and he was a thorn in the side

of the British because he was militarily very successful,

very clever, very brave.

Moreover, he was allied to the French,

and so he was a mortal enemy of the British

and so the British decided to wipe him out.

Now, before they sent a massive army to take his capital,

they made him out to be a vicious and tyrannical Islamic ruler,

which turned out to be completely untrue.

In fact, he was an intellectual, an aesthete.

He was the person who brought the silkworm to southern India

and established their thriving silk market.

I think it might have been new

-or perhaps even commissioned by the club in 1848.

-Oh, right.

A legendary figure like Tipu Sultan, there are so many images of him

and so many prints in the early 19th century that this seems to me

is a typical image that's been taken from a print

-and worked up to an unusually large size by an English artist.

-OK.

His sign, his animal is the tiger.

There's usually the tiger over everything

and that sword hilt ought really to be the Tipu's tiger and he said,

"I would rather live as a tiger for a day than a sheep for a lifetime,"

-when fighting the British, you see.

-Ah, there you go.

So I think what's happened

is because the prints are very, very small

and the original image of him, which is in the British Library,

is only about that high,

that it's all been blown up and he hasn't noticed

that it was a tiger's sword hilt and so he hasn't reproduced that.

And also there's something slightly copyish about it.

We, too, thought it might be a copy of something

so we don't think it's very valuable, basically.

We just think it's very lovely.

What an incredible man he was! I mean, it's got that legend.

It's a warm picture, it's an attractive picture.

-It must look great in your club.

-It looks fantastic.

-£3,000 to £5,000, I should think.

-Wow! Wow, fantastic!

My father grew up in Deolali,

he was born there and he was growing up there

and he was about eight years old and he was playing out,

as kids do, and it was kite-flying season.

Do you know about the kite-flying?

The kite-flying, the competition with the kites?

-Yeah, everybody flies kites...

-You have to try and cut the kites?

Yeah, and when somebody gets cut, everybody chases

after where the kite is coming down to try and catch the kite

and one got cut and it started to come down,

so my father and his mates chased after it and they found it.

So Dad picked it up, he was first to get there.

He was proudly carrying it home,

this splendid kite like he could never have bought for himself

and, as he was walking home,

this horsedrawn carriage came charging up, stopped by him

and the little window opened

and from behind the curtain, this lady said,

"Little boy, I want that kite."

So she pulled out some money and gave it to him,

much more money than he'd ever had

and more than the kite would have cost to replace,

so he handed her the kite and she took the kite and said,

"Thank you very much," and then, from her finger,

she slipped off this ring and gave it to my father and said,

"This is for saving my honour."

Dad didn't know what it meant, so he took it home

and found out much later

that there were a couple of quite important people,

sort of minor prince and princess or aristocracy or somebody,

and they were engaged to each other

and they'd both come to Deolali on holiday before the wedding,

living in separate places and they'd had this kite fight

and he had cut her kite and he would want to get his hands on it

as a sort of triumph over her, but she couldn't allow that to happen

and because my father had found the kite and given it back to her,

-he had saved her honour.

-Saved her honour!

Her honour cos she would have been dishonoured or teased or whatever...

So, she plucks off the finger ring...

Yes, and gives it to my father and this is it, I understand.

And that is it.

Now, the ring itself, let's bring it down to earth rather like the kite.

OK.

The ring, as you can see, horseshoe shape,

set with a line of red stones,

probably made around about 1910, 1915,

so that corresponds with your sense of the date.

-Mm-hm.

-Now, I had a look at the stones underneath my lens.

I'm not entirely sure that they're all real stones, actually.

I think that they are probably a little bit of a combination

-of real rubies and probably glass.

-Yes.

The mount, it's a dull red gold colour

-and I would say therefore it's probably nine carat gold.

-OK.

Let me move on to this bracelet because there it is winking at me.

You tell me a little bit about the bracelet now.

This is from our play box so when we were dressing up,

we would put on the princess ring and it was an armband,

it would go around your arm

and we would all dress up in Mum's old saris

and, you know, wander about pretending to be mummies

and whatever, aunties, and again it was tarnished and horrible

and kind of dark brown and I had it cleaned and somebody said,

"Oh, it's chips of uncut diamond." I was like, "OK."

-I don't think so, but...

-No.

It would be very unlikely that your mother would have just said,

"Let's put this into the toy box, let the children play with it,"

if it happened to be anything but just brass and glass.

-Brass and glass.

-I think it's brass and glass.

-Well, you're wrong.

-Am I?

-Yes.

They ARE diamonds and they're very, very flat indeed.

Typical cuts from the region.

Now, the interesting component for me is not the fact

you've got these rudimentary cut diamonds, it's the red stones.

-OK.

-Because the red stones, they're not glass.

-They're called spinels.

-Oh, spinels.

Spinels. And spinel is a gem that we see quite rarely.

And, oh, I ought to say, by the way,

you thought it was brass, didn't you?

-Yes.

-High carat gold.

All right, so shall we move on to what they might be worth?

The kite runner ring, as we'll call it,

a bit of a mixture of stones, not all rubies, nine carat gold -

the story's priceless, the sentimentality of this

is worth a million rupees,

but the value in commercial terms -

-£30 to £50.

-Fine.

The "brass and glass" bracelet that you casually used as a plaything -

£1,500 to £2,000.

Wow!

-That IS a surprise.

-I know it is, isn't it?

-It only goes to show.

-OK.

£1,500 to £2,000 for a dressing-up bracelet.

Our day here at the mandir or temple has drawn to a close

and thank you so much to the volunteers

and the team here who made it possible to come

to what must be the most exotic location we've ever visited

on the Antiques Roadshow - and just round the corner from Wembley!

And, now, I'm going to leave

in the style of the Maharaja of Jodhpur himself.

Bye-bye! Off we go!

HORN BLARES