Victoria and Albert Museum, London

The V&A is Britain's National Museum of Art and Design and houses internationally known collections of a breadth and richness unparalleled elsewhere in the world (www.vam.ac.uk). Among them the V&A has the good fortune to be custodian of a magnificent collection of Indian Art. Over 45,000 objects dating from 200 BC to the present day reflect the great cultural heritage of India and the history of her association with Great Britain. The Asian Department also holds important collection of material from regions which came under Indian cultural influence - the Himalayan region and South - East Asia.

Two major galleries in the Museum display highlights from the Museum's Indian and South-East Asian collections. A gallery of early Indian art shows a key selection of sculpture dating from 200 BC to 1500 AD. A further gallery shows the spread of cultural influence from India to the Himalayan region and South Est Asia. The Nehru Gallery of Indian Art displays some of the most important objects in the collection produced in the period 1500 to 1900. They include individual works of art of supreme importance: the jade wine cups commissioned and owned by the Mughal emperor Jahangir and Shah Jahan; folios from imperial copies of the Hamzanama ( the Romance of Hamza ) and the Akbarnama ( the History of Akbar ) ; the unique mechanical organ ( Tippoo's Tiger ) created for Tipu Sultan of Mysore; the Golden Throne of Ranjit Singh. Other unrivalled works demonstrate India's long involvement in international trade and the effect of European colonial rule on Indian art. These treasures are shown along with a wide range of other objects in order to present and explain the courtly artistic tradition of India in the period 1550 to 1900. The gallery highlights the ways in which the refined craft traditions which service the court culture were a key to India's trading importance in the period, and the impact of colonial rule on Indian culture. Other parts of the collection, particularly light sensitive materials, are housed in reference and study rooms. All items are accessible by appointment for research and study purposes under normal circumstances.

The Asian Department is one of four major collections departments ( the others being Furniture, Textiles & Fashion; Sculpture, Metalwork, Ceramics & Glass; and Word & Image ). There is also a central collections service division consisting of a Records Section, Registrar, and Conservation and Exhibitions departments. The Museum also manages the Museum of Childhood at Bethnal Green. The work of the collections departments is supported and extended by the Research Department. The Museum also has a full range of service ( design office, photographic studios, printers, public affairs and press office ) and administrative departments. It has an active Learning and Interpretation Division. The Nehru Gallery is the focus of innovative education programmes and the Museum regularly mounts exhibitions on Indian themes. The Museum's publications divison is run by V&A Enterprises, the Museum's commercial operation.

The Victoria & Albert Museum's Indian and South-East Asian Collection

The Indian and South-East Asian collection consists of approximately 45000 objects, of which some 40000 come from the Indian subcontinent and Sri Lanka, and about 5000 from South-East Asia and the Himalayan region.

The Indian Subcontinent

Paintings

The V&A houses a collection of Indian paintings of world standing. Perhaps its greatest strength is the outstanding body of miniature paintings of the Mughal period, particularly the works of imperial quality painted by court artists for the emperors Akbar ( r. 1556 - 1605 ), Jahangir ( r. 1605 - 1627 ) and Shah Jahan ( r. 1628 - 1658 ). These include 26 folios from Akbar's great Hamzanama; 117 illustrations from the Akbarnama ( c. 1590 ); and paintings from the royal albums of Jahangir and Shah Jahan, representing the peak of Mughal Paintings and the splendour of the court as well as aspects of the emperors' personalities, such as Jahangir's love of nature.

The collection of Pahari, or Punjab Hill, paintings is one of the finest outside India, thanks to the collecting efforts of the late W.G. Archer. It includes lyrical scenes of the lovers Radha and Krishna, particularly associated with Kangra, vigorous seventeenth - century illustrations to the poem Rasamanjari from Basholi, and vibrantly coloured eighteenth century portraits from centres such as Mankot. Also included in the collection are several works by the brilliant artist Nainsukh who worked in Jammu in the eighteenth century.

The Rajasthani collection, while patchy in some areas, contains important items such as two leaves from the 1605 Chawand ragamala, splendid lion hunt paintings from Kota, and works from significant but rarely seen courts such as Junia, Sitamau, and Ghanerao. The Rajasthani collection was greatly enhanced in 1952 by a bequest from the Gayer - Anderson brothers, who had collected Indian paintings and drawings over many years.

Rare early works in the Indian Collection include the 'Vredenburg' manuscript of the 'Perfection of Wisdom' - an early 12th century illustrated Buddhist work from Eastern India; early Rajput painting, including two pages from an early 16th century important Bhagavata Purana; and several Jain sutras and mystical diagrams, including a splendid large yantra dated 1447.

The 'Company syle' - works done by Indian artists for British patrons - is well represented, the schools of Tanjore, Bengal and Mysore being particularly strong. The Department also houses a large collection of works by British artists working in India, such as William Simpson, William Carpenter and John Lockwood Kipling.

Later categories include the lively bazaar paintings of Kalighat in Calcutta, works by Rabindranath Tagore and his brothers, late nineteenth - century paintings from the Schools of Art ( which include a set of copies of the cave paintings at Ajanta ) as well as a growing collection of paintings, prints, collages and drawings by contemporary artists working both in Britain and India.

Sculpture

The South Asian sculpture collection is remarkably comprehensive and represents most of the mainstream styles of the Indian traditions. It spans the period from around the first century AD through to the sixteenth century and beyond.

The Kushan schools of Mathura and Gandhara are particularly strong, linking the art of northern India with the Graeco - Roman influenced art of the Gandharan region of modern Pakistan and Afghanistan. Buddhist and Jain sculptures of the Gupta and post - Gupta periods are well represented, whilst Hindu images dominate the medieval and later periods. The South Indian tradition is represented by a number of early sculptures and an excellent group of Chola and Vijayanagar period bronzes, including a superb tenth - century Siva Nataraja.

Textiles

The Indian collection holds over 11000 separate registered textiles, including carpets and saddlery with textile elements. Piece goods and trimmings constitute the largest individual groups in the collection. They comprise both yardage intended to be cut and tailored, and woven single garment pieces ready to wear straight off the loom. These include woven cottons, woven silks, printed cottons, silk and cotton mixed fabrics, kincobs of silk or mixed fabrics brocaded with metal thread and miscellaneous trimmings. These piece goods were acquired more or less en masse in the middle decades of the nineteenth century as examples of current manufacture.

The collection also includes embroideries made for local consumption and commercial embroideries for both the European and the Indian and Middle Eastern markets, applique and patchwork, Kashmir shawls, for the domestic and the export market, tie-dyed fabrics, tinsel prints, roghan work, pile carpets and flat - weave rugs.

Decorative Arts

The V&A Indian collection is particularly rich in the decorative arts. Its metalwork objects include ritual objects, temple lamps, tools, vessels and jewellery of gold, silver and base metals. Besides an extensive collection of arms and armour it has ceramics, a superb collection of royal Mughal jades, and other hardstones, small items of woodwork and lacquer, pipes and huqqa parts, basketry, and leather items.

Furniture

The Museum holds a significant collection of Indian and Indo - European furniture ranging in date from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. It includes significant provenanced items as well as representative work from all the major centre of furniture production.

Performing Arts

The Museum has a collection of Indian musical instruments, puppets, masks and other performances items.

The Himalayan Region

Apart from a few interesting early acqisitions such as pieces collected during the 1850s by E. Schlagintweit and the 1870s by Sir Douglas Forsyth ( Ladakh, Yarkand ), the collections are built on a core of material collected by various members of the 1904 British Expedition to Tibet. The collection consists of approximately 1300 pieces, including tangkas, bronzes, textiles, a large collection of ritual and domestic objects and jewellery. The sculpture holdings from the Himalayas are large, but uneven in quality. Nepal is represented by several copper images of excellent quality, and there are other significant and early pieces (two early Sino - Tibetan dated tangkas, a fifteenth - century mandala, a fouteenth - century wetern Tibetan broze, a fourteenth- fifteenth century Buddha, and several Yonglo-related bronzes of the later fifteenth or early sixteenth centuries).

South-East Asia

The Museum has collections from both mainland and island South-East Asia, though these are much smaller than its South Asian Collections, and number in total over 3000 items.

The collection includes a small high quality group of early sculptures from Indonesia, Thailand, Burma and Cambodia which reveal the essential concerns of their particular traditions, but the bulk of the collection is from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Indonesian collection is strong on textiles, particularly batiks and ikats, puppets and weapons. The Thal and Malay collections, which include small numbers of a wide range of items, are strongest on metalwares. The Burmese collection (1850 items) is the largest and the most representative of the Museum's South-East Asian collections, and is one of the best in the world outside Burma. The Burmese collection includes sculptures dating from the ninth century to the twentieth century, in metal, stone, wood, terracotta and lacquer. It also includes musical instruments, puppets, masks, lacquer vesels, manuscripts and books, Ivories, weapons, ceramics, furniture boxes, architectural woodwork, etc., and a complete Buddhist shrine.

Sri Lanka

The Museum's Sri Lankan collection holds a number of pieces of early medieval sculpture including a pair of guardstones from Polonnaruva, an eleventh - century bronze image of Hanuman, and a good range of items from the period of Portuguese and Dutch contact, including important ivories, and from the later Kandyan period. It is particularly rich in ivories from the period of European contact. The bulk of the collection, however, dates to the end of the nineteenth century and comes from the great collector of Sri Lankan material, Ralph Nevill. The collection of weapons is rich.