* A VARIED GROUP OF SIX LACQUERED PAPIER-MÂCHÉ BOOK BINDINGS
PROPERTY FROM AN IMPORTANT PRIVATE EUROPEAN COLLECTOR
Iran and India, 19th and early 20th century

Each of rectangular shape, each panel lacquered, polychrome-painted and heightened in gold, comprising a fine pair of panels with the central bust of a young Qajar maiden in a revealing European dress, contemplating a rose against a stately home in a landscape, within a lobed and cusped gilt cartouche, the pale green ground intricately decorated in gold and polychromes with scrolling stylised flora and foliage, smaller cartouches above and below with heads of young ladies and distant townscapes, set within multiple borders with rows of repeating scrolling vegetal sprays, the verso in plain black, 23cm x 16.3cm; a later pair of panels decorated with a wine and music theme in a stylised bold polychrome-painted scheme, a panther attacking a deer in the central cartouche, each side signed Imami Isfahan, the end papers marbled in black and white around a four-stem tulip, the original black calf leather spine still attached, 31cm x 25cm; and a near pair of panels, one with a turbaned young falconer in green dress and heeled black boots, the mottled brown ground with a lobed cartouche to the top right in red inscribed ‘Raqam kamtarin bandegan Ali Quli Beg…’, 32.5 x 21cm including the blue mount, the latter, possibly of Indian origin, with a princely young falconer in a gold patka, standing on a hillocky black ground flanked by flowering bushes and birds, flying above a partridge and a duck, the borders of intricate gold repeating floral scrolls, the verso with the typical gol-o-bolbol motif with a nightingale on a rose surrounded by narcissi, hyacinths, marigolds and sweet williams against a black ground, in polychrome floral border, framed and glazed on both sides, 33.3cm x 22.3cm including frame.