Travel back in time with 105 rare lithographs, engravings, maps, and botanical prints at an exhibition in a Lower Parel space
A Hand Coloured Lithographic view of Teroovelliadel
The Indian Subcontinent has had trade relations with the world for thousands of years. One plausible theory even goes back to the Old Testament of The Bible, where Nala Sopara (then the port of Sopara) might be mentioned as Ophir, a port that had trade relations with King Solomon, and supplied luxurious goods such as ivory, gold, peacocks and even monkeys.
View of a remarkable banian tree near Tanjore, Elisha Trapaud
Pavitra Rajaram, design director and curator of Nilaya Anthology wants you to fast forward, to the 16th Century, with Passing Worlds: Of Encounters, Empires and Exchange, an ongoing exhibition of 105 rare lithographs, engravings, maps, and botanical prints from the 16th to 20th Century that give us the world’s view of the Indian Subcontinent from that period.
The Yule Log in India. PICS COURTESY/NILAYA ANTHOLOGY
These include engravings, aquatints, woodcuts, and hand-coloured lithographs, which Rajaram feels have been overlooked as an art form, despite their role in describing and depicting life and culture in India before photography was invented. The pieces depict everyday life, our built heritage — architecture and monuments, as well as natural heritage — landscapes and botanicals. These will interest collectors for their rarity, and design enthusiasts too.
Scarcity in India
“There are some real stunners in our show: rare hand-coloured folios from Hortus Malabaricus, the first known collaborative text depicting the medicinal plants of the Malabar, commissioned by the Dutch Governor of Cochin, labelled in five languages including Latin and Malayalam, and created collaboratively by Indian and Europeans physicians and artists. I also personally love the hand-coloured maps, created by German and Dutch cartographers across the 18th and 19th Centuries. They are a poignant reminder of how central India was to global trade routes and the power centres, and might be forgotten cities today,” the curator sums up.
Till September 8; 11 am to 7.30 pm
At Nilaya Anthology, Peninsula Corporate Park, Lower Parel.
Call 18002677071
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