Pierre Jourdan-Barry entered the market of Indian decorative arts in the 1980s, when a group of collectors, dealers and academics began to research and collect these wonderful objects, recognising their enormous importance. Metalwork was first given prominence in 1982 by Victoria & Albert Museum in the seminal exhibition The Indian Heritage - Court Life Arts under Mughal Rule. Dealers and collectors like Stuart Cary Welch, Simon Digby, Krishna Riboud, Spink & Son, John Robert Alderman and Mark Zebrowski, Terence McInerney, Peter Marks and later Simon Ray where all instrumental in developing the subject and its market. Other exhibitions such as India - Art & Culture 1300-1900 at the Metropolitan Museum New York in 1985 put Indian decorative arts into its wider context. The most important and comprehensive publication to date is without doubt Mark Zebrowski’s survey Gold, Silver & Bonze from Mughal India, published in 1997, in which many pieces from the Jourdan-Barry collection are illustrated.The collection is remarkable for its high quality, the extraordinary rarity of some of the individual pieces, but also its vision and diversity. It encompasses both Hindu and Mughal courtly and devotional objects, precious and non-precious materials, various techniques and covers a wide geographical area and timespan.
