Arts of the Islamic World & India at Sotheby’s London

Explore The Arts Of The Islamic World & India With Over 300 Lots At Sotheby’S London

Sumptuous Mughal and Ottoman Textiles from the Collection of Co-Founder of New York’s Storm King Art Center, H. Peter Stern

A Magnificent Diwan of Hafiz, the “Shakespeare of Persian Literature” Recovered to the Heirs of Jafar Ghazi in January after Thirteen Years

A Rare 13^th-Century Pottery Pitcher from the Famed “Gurgan Hoard”

Auction on 1 April at 10.30am BST

VIEW CATALOGUE ONLINE HERE

 The sale will offer thirty-five beautiful pieces from the collection of the late H. Peter Stern, an avid traveller who co-founded the Storm King Art Center – the world’s most important modern sculpture garden – and served as Vice Chair of the World Monuments Fund. His pursuit of a ‘global idyll’ is reflected in his collection, with Ottoman mounted panels of silk and velvet brocade and Mughal velvet tent hangings, adorned with floral motifs, sitting alongside delicate architectural Company School watercolours. Stern lived with these treasures in his home, Cedar House, in the lower Hudson Valley – eclectically decorated, as he mixed East and West, ancient and modern, intellectual, spiritual and cultural. A further tranche of five pieces will be sold in New York on 22 June, as part of the India, Himalayan, Southeast Asian Works of Art sale.

The auction will also present a magnificent Diwan of Hafiz dated 1462 AD, from the collection of Jafar Ghazi, which bears a dedication to one of the most important patrons in fifteenth-century Central Asia, the Qara Qoyunlu prince Pir Budaq. Numerous manuscripts dedicated to the keen bibliophile have survived in institutions and private collections today, and this previously unrecorded Diwan is an important witness to the grandeur that must have been his library.

Further highlights include an exquisite Kashan turquoise glazed pottery pitcher, a statement necklace featuring nine rows of pearls and an octagonal micro-mosaic box. Please find attached press releases in English and Arabic. High-resolution images available on request.