THE PARISH CHURCH at Luxulyan in Cornwall, which is dedicated to St Ciricius and St Julitta, is very attractive. Although it was built in the 15th century, it contains a stone baptismal font that was created long before the church was constructed. It is a Norman stone font designed like that in St Petroc’s Church in Bodmin (Cornwall). It consists of a circular bowl with carved outer sides on a central shaft, with 4 outer shafts each surmounted by a carved head. It stands on a granite plinth.
The font in Luxulyan is in a good state of preservation. The carved faces on it have a simplicity of design that made me think of early Greek Cycladic sculpture as well as mid-20th century ‘modern art’. Sculpted before the era of gothic art, these faces are curiously alluring. It is amazing to think that this beautiful item has been in use for about 1000 years.
TO THOSE ACCUSTOMED to seeing European depictions of the birth of Jesus at Bethlehem, a picture currently (May 2025) on display at the SOAS Gallery in London’s Bloomsbury might come as a surprise.
In 1958, the Ugandan artist Francis Musango (1932-2005) painted his “Birth of Christ”. Set in a luxuriant tropical landscape, everyone in the manger where Jesus is lying has a black African face. When I saw this painting yesterday, 8 May 2025, it was the first time I had seen a Nativity scene in which all the people are Africans. Jesus was born in what is now the Middle East, yet in many European depictions of this historic birth, the faces of the people in them have European rather than Semitic physiognomies. So, it is perhaps not so surprising that an African artist should have chosen to populate his Nativity scene with people who look African rather than Semitic.
Musango is not an artist whom I have come across before. So here is something about him on the SOAS website:
“Francis Musango trained as a teacher and also joined the religious order of ‘The Brothers of Christian Instruction’. In 1954 he gained a scholarship to the school of art at Makerere University, where he studied under Trowell’s tutelage. Subsequently he worked as an art educator in Kitovu and later as Inspector of Schools, Arts and Crafts (1970-77), promoting art in the Ugandan curriculum. He became a lecturer at the Makerere School of Art in 1977 and head of department from 1986 to 1988.”
VISITING CHRISTIE’S AUCTION house near London’s Piccadilly is never disappointing. There are usually items on display, waiting to be auctioned, which are of great interest. Today (25 April 2025), we viewed the items awaiting a sale that will be held on the first of May. The sale is called “Art of the Islamic and Indian Worlds Including Rugs and Carpets”. Standing alone in one room is a folio (page) with coloured paintings on its front and back. This item has been called “The Prophet Muhammad Meets Jesus in the Beit Al-Ma’mur and the Arrival at the The Fourth Heaven”. It was created in Afghanistan in about 1466, and is in remarkably good condition.
The images show two episodes in the Mi’raj, which as the Christie’s website explained is:
“… one of the most important moments in the life of the Prophet Mohammed. In the Qur’an, sura al-‘Isra alludes to the fact that Allah transported ‘his servant Muhammad by night from the Masjid al-Haram to the Masjid al-Aqsa, whose surroundings we have blessed, so that We may show him some of Our signs’. Though traditions vary, most take this to be a reference to the Prophet being miraculously taken from Mecca to Jerusalem and thence to Heaven.”
Muhammad is depicted as riding on Buraq, his quadruped mount. In the picture at Christie’s, Buraq has been shown as having a human head. In one picture, the Prophet Muhammad is dressed in green and can be seen riding on Buraq and meeting a man dressed in brown robes, who is Jesus (Isa) Christ. In between Jesus and the Prophet, there is a figure with wings, the angel Jibra’il (Gabriel). These holy men are shown meeting in the Beit Al-Ma’mur, which is a celestial form of the Holy Kaaba at Mecca. The picture on the reverse of the folio, we find the Angel Gabriel depicted again. He seems to be heading for a group of angels, followed by the Prophet dressed in green and riding on Buraq. The angels in the picture are shown greeting the Prophet and Gabriel as they make their way through the tiers of heaven.
Apart from being amazingly beautiful, there were some details that caught my eye. Jesus is depicted with a face that could be Arabic. All the other faces, including that of Muhammad, have oriental eyes typical of Central Asia or further east. The faces of others in the pictures, including that of Buraq, are typically Far Eastern in type. I suppose that in 15th century Afghanistan, Central Asian faces were a familiar sight. In the picture that depicts Muhammad moving towards the angels, much of the space surrounding the figures is filled with swirling golden clouds which makes the picture look like a Chinese creation at first sight. Another detail that interested me, and which I spotted in some other pictures on display at Christies, was that although the artist had drawn a frame around the image, one angel seemed to be standing partly outside the frame.
One of the delightful features about Christie’s is that if one asks a member of staff a question about an exhibit, he or she will go out of their way to answer it accurately. In the case of the pictures described above, a gallery assistant asked one of the specialists who dealt with it to come from her office to discuss it with us. This lady answered our questions and explained that what we were looking at is extremely rare. The folio at Christie’s was from a book, whose pages have been dispersed to many different places over time. In Paris there is another very similar but slightly older example of that book, but the page with the episodes I have just described has been lost from it.
The auction whose lots we saw on display contains many fine Mughal and other Indian pictures and objects, as well as items, such as the folio, which originated in Islamic countries such as Persia, Turkey, and places in Central Asia. Once again, a visit to Christie’s has proved most rewarding.
IN AUGUST 1947, India and Pakistan became independent sovereign nations. Following this, vast numbers of Sikhs and Hindus fled from Pakistan to India, and many Muslims fled in the opposite direction. This mass migration of people was accompanied by unbelievably horrific incidents of violence; many lost their lives on both sides of the frontier. Meanwhile, in much of India, daily life for many went on without incident. A yearly publication was published in Bombay from 1919 until 1979. It was called “Times of India Annual”, but between 1942 and 1948, it was called “Indian Annual”. The 1948 issue of “Indian Annual” was published by the Times of India soon after Independence was achieved in 1947. I have a copy of this beautifully illustrated issue. In common with many magazines, it is amply supplied with advertisements. Studying these was interesting because although some of them seem to have recognised that India was independent of both the British Empire and separate from Pakistan, others have not taken this into account.
I imagine that many of the readers of the 1948 Indian Annual were Indians. The magazine includes advertisements for many products used by Indians. Many of these commercials depict faces or people. Some of them show people with faces that look Indian. These include the adverts for Firestone tyres, the India Tea Marketing Expansion Board, Cyclax (beauty products), Tata Steel, Saba Radio Company, and Himanlal Manchand (jewellers). Others feature people with faces that are unmistakably (white) European, for example: Ovaltine, Terra Trading Corporation (modern Czechoslovak glassware), Argoflex (cameras), Rogers (soft drinks), Yardley (beauty products), Rendells products (feminine hygiene), and Virol (a health product). Either these companies that used European faces were recycling pre-existing company advertising material or not sensitive to the fact that India was then independent, or both. Another possibility is that these companies were appealing to the spending abilities of the many European people who were to continue living in India until well into the 1970s. For even after Independence, there were institutions (e.g., some clubs and schools) in India that for many years were only for Europeans, but excluded Indians.
Several of the advertisements in the 1948 publication listed the cities where they had branches. Some of these listings ignored the fact that India and Pakistan were no longer parts of one country. Ovaltine was distributed by a company that had branches in Bombay, Calcutta, Karachi (Pakistan), and Madras. The mechanical and construction engineers Garlic &Co had branches in Indian cities and also in Lahore. And Modern Trading Company listed offices in Bombay, New Delhi, Karachi (Pakistan), Calcutta, and Lahore (Pakistan). Another advertisement, that for the Chicago Telephone & Radio Co. Ltd, includes listings of offices both in India and Pakistan. The Rootes Group, which manufactured cars like the Humber, the Hillman, and the Sunbeam Talbot, list their (I quote) “Distributors in India” as being in towns such as Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar, and Rawalpindi. Had the advertiser not realised that these towns were now no longer in India, but in Pakistan? In all the cases I have mentioned in this paragraph, the advertising agencies seemed to have ignored the fact that what had once been (greater) India was now India and Pakistan. Given what was happening in the way of the misery caused by the partition of India at the time the Annual was published, it seems odd or even insensitive that the advertisements display no sign that the Subcontinent had been divided.
After Independence, Jawaharlal Nehru wanted to move India into what he perceived as the ‘modern era’. Some of the advertisements reflect this both in their design and the products they were promoting. The advert for Godrej shows some tubular household furniture of a design that many would have considered avant-garde in 1948. An advertisement for Indian-made Panama cigarettes is reminiscent of the Italian Futurist style. Likewise, for the Tata steel advertisement. This has futurist features but also veers towards the Soviet Socialist Realism style.
Finally, we come to a very interesting advert, that for the Bombay based Himanlal Manchand jewellers. It depicts Indian warriors on horses and is covered with crests of various rulers of Princely States and that of the Governor of Bombay, which is accompanied by the words:
“By appointment to H.E. Rt. Hon’ble Sir John Colville, Governor of Bombay”
Sir John Colville (1894-1954) was appointed Governor of Bombay in March 1943. He held this post even after India became independent, and was replaced by Raja Maharaj Singh in early January 1948. The jewellers were also by appointment to the princely rulers of Baroda, Jodhpur, Cooch-Behar, Jubbal, Jaipur, Indore, Palanpur, and Dewas. These maharajahs had been the rulers of ‘semi-autonomous’ (vassal) states within the British Empire. All of those listed became incorporated into the India which came into existence in August 1947. Their rulers were recognised officially by the Indian government until 1971. Between 1947 and 1971, these and other rulers of princely states received a privy purse from the Indian government. In 1971, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi put an end to the majority of these payments and de-recognised their titles and put an end to all of their royal privileges. So, in 1948 when Himanlal Manchand placed their full page coloured advertisement in 1948, they were entitled to show off their appointments to Indian royalty. The advertisements alone make the 1948 Indian Annual an interesting curiosity. The articles in the magazine along with many of its fine illustrations make it into a real treasure of great historical interest. While writing this piece, I discovered that the 1949 issue can be read online (https://archive.org/details/dli.venugopal.824/page/n91/mode/2up) . Skimming through this, I noticed that some companies still depicted European faces in their adverts and others included cities in Pakistan in the lists of their branches. This was despite the fact that since October 1947 Pakistan had been fighting a war over Kashmir. This only ended on the 1st of January 1949.
PEOPLE WHO HAVE met me often remark on my bushy eyebrows. Barbers are always keen to trim them, but I will not let them do that.
Many years ago, sometime in the 1980s if I remember correctly, my father and I were invited to a birthday party to celebrate the 70th birthday of my Dad’s step-brother Frank Walt. It was a large gathering held in a house in London’s St Johns Wood. Apart from my father, there was nobody at the occasion, whom I had met before. While I was wandering about rather aimlessly, a small lady came up to me, and declared in a North American accent:
“You must be a Halperin. You have the Halperin look.”
At that time, I had no idea what she meant by this. Even though I had no clue about what she was talking about, what she said made me feel good – I felt it was special to be recognised as part of a ‘clan’ by someone who did not know me ‘from Adam’, as the saying goes.
I now know about the Halperin family. Put simply, my father’s mother was Leah (née Halperin). She was one of the six children of Joseph and Deborah Halperin. A few days ago (in February 2024), a cousin sent me a photograph of Leah’s brother Wolf Halperin. I looked at it, and immediately realised what my fellow guest at Frank’s party had meant by the ‘Halperin look’. Wearing a Fedora hat, Wolf’s eyebrows immediately reminded me of mine and those of other members of the Yamey family. Seeing this was uncanny.
Wolf Halperin died many years ago, long before I began visiting India. Last November (i.e., 2023), we visited a small shop in Baroda (Gujarat). It was not our first visit. We had been there once about 5 years earlier. The shopkeeper recognised us immediately. As he said (in Gujarati) “I remember you”, he pointed at my eyebrows.
WHAT REMAINS OF the Aina Mahal Palace in Bhuj (Kutch, Gujarat) after the powerful earthquake of 2001 is now open to the public as a fascinating museum. One of its many remarkable exhibits is a painting, which is 15 metres long and 22 cm wide. Painted in 1876 by Mr Juma Ibrahin Wadha, it depicts in minute detail a Kutch State parade during the reign of Maharao Pragmalji II, who was on the throne between 1860 and 1875.
The faces in the painting are all portraits of individuals – actual depictions, not stylised images. The degree of detailing is superb – almost photographic, yet still artistic.
Amongst the many faces that can be seen on the painting are several which have unmistakably black African features. They are all soldiers dressed in armour and guarding the Maharani, the Maharao’s queen. It is possible that they might have been eunuchs, but detailed as the picture is, this cannot be ascertained by examining it!
Black Africans travelled to India (mostly as slaves) from East Africa to Gujarat and Kutch during the 14th to 17th centuries. Mainly of Bantu descent, many of them converted to Islam. Some of them rose to high positions in society. For example, one of them became a general, who founded the Sidi Saiyedd mosque in Ahmedabad. Their descendants are known as members of the Siddi community. Known as Sheedhi in Pakistan, there is apparently a significant number of them in Lowe Sindh and Karachi. Currently, there are about 50000 Siddis in India, of which about one third live not in Gujarat but in Karnataka.
There are many other interesting details on the picture of the parade, but it was the depictions of Siddi soldiers that particularly caught my attention.
yamey 