January 2009

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The scale of his buying also allows for novel and sweeping overviews, and the collector-magician is about to pull one more rabbit – the last, he claims – out of the hat: enamels of the world 1700-2000 (Fig. 6). True to form, not a word of the project was breathed until it was deemed to be approaching completion. The collection was begun some 25 years ago: the 1,200 pieces cover all major areas of enamel production. It is to be covered by another pioneering catalogue, written by 16 scholars and due out later this year. An exhibition of 300 highlights will be shown at the Hermitage in St Petersburg in 2009.

One suspects, however, that Islamic art remains Khalili’s abiding passion. What makes this collection unique is its extraordinary breadth and depth. It ranges from the 8th century to the early 20th (Khalili does not ‘do’ contemporary – for him ‘the greatest critic of art is time’), spans the globe from Moorish Spain to China and includes every conceivable medium. It also runs the gamut from the masterpiece to the workaday. ‘The collection is like a symphony’, he says. ‘Every object has its note and the combination of them all makes the music. There is not much point just having the lead violin and the piano.’ As this exhibition vividly reveals, the lion’s share of Islamic art is secular rather than religious and, contrary to popular misconception, these secular objects often took figural forms. Illustrating this perfectly is a group of spirited metalwork ewers, incense burners, pomanders and the like in the form of pet lynxes (Fig. 5), lions, elephants and geese as well as a 13th-century Kashan pottery chess piece representing the Sultan Tughril ii (Fig. 4).