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The Indian Durbar
Hall at Osborne
The Illustrated London
News - Her Majesty the Queen, as Empress of India, tkaes
great intrest, especially of late years, in studying the
affiars of her vast Asiatic dominion, the condition of its
different populations, their habits and manners, and the
rank of its native princes, some of whom have been her visitors
in England, and with whom she has learnt to conversem sufficiently
for ceremonial intercourse, in the current Hindostani lanuage.....
This is the construction, in the new wing of Osborne House,
East Cowes, the Queen's favourite residence in the Isle
of Wight, of a beautifal apartment, decoreated according
to ancient Hindu and Sikh patterns of ornament, to be used
as a 'Durbar' or hall of state and Court receptions, upon
occasions particularly concerning Asiatic guest of her Majesty.
The work, at the Queen's private expensem was preformed
during the years 1891 and 1892, under the personal superintendence
of the designer, Ram Singh, a native of the Punab, formerly
a pupil of Mr. Kipling, C.I.E. - father of the popular novelist,
Rudyard Kipling - in the Mayo School of Art at Lahore. It
was the Duke of Connaught, when his Royal Highness was in
Indiam who appreciated the merits of Ram Singh amd recommedned
him to the Queen for this employment, before which that
ingenious and tasteful native artist a master of architectural
decoration, wood-carving, and cabinet- work- had achieved
high success with his designs for the Chiefs' College at
Lahore, the Lahore Jubilee Museum, and te Municipal Halls
of Ferozepur and Allahabadm winning the prozes and preference
in open competitions. He also designed caskets, of ebony
and silver, for presentation to the Queen and to the Duke
of Connaught and furnished the decorations of the billiard
- room and corridor in the mansion of his Royal Highness
at Bagshot Park. We there fore willingly, in the belief
that much is to be learned from India, as, indeed, has been
already confessef, in these branches of ornamental art,
give portrait of Ram Singh, together with a view of the
interior of the Durbar Hall at Osborne.
The city of Amristar, where Ram Singh got his early training
as a workman, is a great centre of trade, as well as the
orginal headquarters of the Sikh national and religious
community in the Punjab. Many of its houses are ornamentd
internally with the finest wood carvings, an art which has
been practised by Indian workmen almost to an equal degree
of manual skill with those of China and Japan, and with
far better notions of richness and magnificence of effect,
gracefulness of design, and the artistic treatment of surface
reliefs. The ancient Hindu temples were probably unequalled
in the beauty of the elaborate sandal-wood carvings on their
ceilings and doors, of which the existing gates of the Sommanth
temple are only a copy; these were carried off to Ghuzni,
in 1024, by the Moslem conqueror, Sultan Mahmoud, and were
recovered and brought to Agra by Lord Ellenborough, in 1842,
after the first Afgan war. - 12/8/1893
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