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Made For The Maharajas : A Design Diary Of Princely India
Amin Jaffer
Made for Maharajas: A Design Diary of Princely India explores the fascination among Indian royalty for western luxury goods. This taste reached its peak at the height of the British Raj (1857-1947), when Indian rulers began travelling to Europe and remodelled their lives along western lines. Commissioning architects to design palaces in modern or historic styles, purchasing fleets of cars and ordering their family jewels to be reset by the most skilled London and Paris goldsmiths of the day, Indian princes established themselves as the new creative patrons of European high design. Based equally in the archives of firms such as Louis Vuitton, Boucheron, Chaumet and Hermès, and in palace and private collections, this book explores the role of maharajas in an age of high spending and fashion. It brings together original designs with surviving objects, exploring for the first time the creative dialogue between Indian princes and the skilled tradesmen who produced wonders for their delectation. Married to the objects themselves are the absorbing and often humourous accounts of how maharajas indulged their tastes with unparalleled extravagance and aplomb. Rich in anecdotes and visually splendid, Made for Maharajas brings alive the extraordinary rich, varied and sometimes implausible works commissioned by princes whose wealth knew no bounds and whose eccentricities were legend.
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