London dealer John Eskenazi made some sales during March’s Asia Week. The gallery says interest was strong particularly among East Coast Collectors:
- one of whom acquired a stone sculpture of Ganesha, dating from 10th century Eastern India, for a six-figure sum. Instantly recognisable and arguably the most popular of the Hindu deities, Ganesha is known as “Bestower of Success”
- a standing Buddha from Vietnam, 3rd/4th century, which sold to a European contemporary art collector for a six-figure sum. The remarkable survival of such early Vietnamese wooden Buddha figures may be due to the fact that they were carved in particularly durable woods and buried in salt-rich marshland. When they were made, Vietnam, and the surrounding Mekong delta region (including modern Cambodia, and parts of Laos, Thailand, Myanmar and Malaysia) was an Indianized state known as Funan.
- An Indian private collector acquired a bronze figure of Shivakami from South India, dating from the Vijayanagara period, 14th century, also for a six-figure sum; and a bronze head of a Buddha from Thailand, Ayutthaya period, 16th century, found a new home in America.
