THE CLIVE OF INDIA TREASURE SELLS FOR £4.7 MILLION
(27 April 2004)

An extraordinarily splendid jewelled jade flask produced for the Mughal royal court in India in the 17th century, sold at Christie's today for £2,917,250. The flask was the highlight of the Clive of India Treasure, a rare collection of five Mughal treasures bought back from India by Robert Clive of India (1725-1774) which sold for a total of £4,700,375.

Further highlights from the Clive of India Treasure include a flywhisk made from banded agate and inset with rubies which, estimated at £5,000-8,000, sold for 113 times its high estimate at £901,250 and a pistol-grip dagger decorated with elegant floral sprays which sold for £733,250. Also offered from the Collection was a pale green nephrite jade bowl which sold for £53,775 and a particularly beautiful huqqa decorated with innumerable sapphires set off by a rich royal blue enamel ground which sold for £94,850.

The flask was once part of the Royal collection at the Imperial Court in Delhi. It probably formed part of the immense treasure removed from the court of the Mughal emperor Muhammad Shah by Nadir Shah, the invading Persian monarch who famously looted the Mughal royal treasury in 1739. The only two other extant jewelled flasks are now part of the Hermitage Collection in Russia.

Clive remains one of the most enigmatic figures in the history of the British Empire - the son of a Shropshire squire, he became a solider, administrator, adventurer, and above all the man whose exploits ensured Britain's supremacy in India. By the age of 35, having risen through the East India Company, Clive had amassed a collection that epitomized the unimagined wealth of the superb decorative arts dating from a time when India had the richest treasury in the world.