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A Jeweler's Glorious Taste: The Vever Collection
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15091 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
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4 / 1989 |
2,754 Words |
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Katie Ziglar
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Islamic books hold immediate appeal for Western eyes. Balanced compositions with dreamlike color seem to float within mysterious, intricate borders. Exquisite patterns executed in precious materials draw the viewer in for closer examination, richly rewarded by using a magnifying glass. Script flows with an arresting, undulating grace. The bookbindings, too, are works of art; their delicately tooled leather surfaces hint of the wonders they contain. Gazing at these miniature paintings, one observes princely pastimes of the hunt, picnicking in a garden with musicians, and the weighty obligations of hearing the petitions of subjects and fighting the enemy in battle.
Thanks to the Smithsonian Institution's recent purchase of the Vever Collection of over 500 Arab, Persian, and Indian bound manuscripts, single folio paintings, and bookbindings thought lost for forty years, there is increased opportunity to appreciate this rich and astonishing art form. A selection of 150 works from the Vever Collection is on view in an exhibition at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in Washington, D.C., through April 30. Entitled A Jeweler's Eye: Islamic Arts of the Book from the Vever Collection, the show explores book-related objects amassed by Parisian jeweler Henri Vever (1854-1942) earlier this century.
A look at the works gathered by Vever confounds two widely held misconceptions about Islamic art: that figural representations are rare, and that there is no portraiture of Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, nor of other key figures such as Adam and Eve. It also provides insight into the development of the Islamic book, particularly the secular book, from the earliest diagrammatic texts through the more fully developed story or narrative history, to portraiture and the creation of albums incorporating notable examples of calligraphy and poetry within unrelated decorative schemes.
While the individual pieces in the Vever Collection stand on their own merit, both as discrete works of art and as representative of the traditions that produced them, the collection as a whole bears the mark of the man responsible for it; the objects are, in a sense, a reflection of the sensibilities of this particular collector. Vever's profession as a designer of Art Nouveau jewelry and his extensive experience in collecting many types of art, including European painting and sculpture and Japanese prints, surely influenced the way he approached the newly discovered and very exciting field of Islamic books.
Vever was perhaps unable to obtain examples of the earliest Islamic Persian book, Varqa and Qulshah, which dates from the mid-thirteenth century and has rather simple illustrations. His collection is especially rich in Persian works from the fourteenth century onward and in later manuscripts and pages from India, with fewer examples predating the 1258 destruction of Baghdad by the Mongols. After that catastrophe, the number of books in Arabic declined precipitously and most Arabic books came from Mamluk Egypt and Syria. Vever's collection contains examples of this latter type.
The story of the Islamic book is part of the complex history of Islamic art, which began with the founding of Islam in the seventh century A.D. Islamic art comes from a geographic area larger than that encompassed by the Roman Empire at its height. Muslim culture flourished as far west as Spain and Morocco, and east into India and what is now the Soviet Union. Islamic books were
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