* A COLLECTION OF FIVE DÉCOUPAGE LOOSE FOLIOS DEPICTING ANIMALS AND FOLIAGE
PROPERTY FROM AN IMPORTANT PRIVATE EUROPEAN COLLECTOR
Iran, late 19th century

Pencil and intricately decoupaged, coloured and marbled papers laid onto album card, comprising two folios featuring roosters and flowering branches, one with two roosters before a tree with several birds, another with a flowering tree against a black ground, and one with three classical heads of men and one of a ram, in grisaille, sprouting willowy branches in a variety of greens, the largest 33cm x 21cm.

Reminiscent of the celebrated Nasir Al-Din Shah Album, the present group exemplifies the Qajar taste for and fascination with out-swaggering the Europeans in their own feats. The proof is that despite the Persian craftsmen's unfamiliarity of style, découpage technique and subject matters, they always managed to create new and curious artforms, especially when it pleased the king, the arbiter of taste.