Organised by
The Iran Heritage Foundation and The British Institute of Persian Studies and the Victoria & Albert Museum.
Date
Wednesday 4th March 2015, 7pm-8pm (followed by reception)
Location
Description
The Victoria and Albert Museum possesses one of the world’s greatest collections of Iranian art, most of which was acquired by purchase. An important exception is the unique archive of architectural drawings associated with Mirza Akbar, which apparently came as a gift. In 1874-76, the South Kensington-trained architect (and future museum director) Caspar Purdon Clarke was in Tehran, working with local ustads (or master-builders) on the completion of the present British Embassy on Ferdowsi Avenue. During this collaboration, two of Purdon Clarke’s Tehran colleagues gave him the drawings, in return for his teaching them new techniques required for the Embassy project. Once back in London, Purdon Clarke sold the drawings to the South Kensington Museum (re-named the V&A in 1899), where they have been preserved for almost 140 years. Newly conserved, the series consists of over 200 drawings, plans and sketches from Qajar Tehran. These wonderful designs are testimony to the lively variety of structural and decorative ideas used in Qajar architecture, and they offer important evidence of how these ideas were applied in practice.
Biography
Dr Moya Carey has been the Iran Heritage Foundation Curator for the Iranian Collections at the V&A since 2009. She is currently researching cultural relationships between Qajar Iran and Victorian Britain, as evidenced through the creation of the V&A’s Iranian art collections in the late nineteenth century.
She completed her doctorate in the Department of Art and Archaeology at SOAS in 2001 and has worked for a number of organisations with important Iranian collections, including the Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan Collection in Geneva, the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin and the British Museum in London. She has also taught at university level at The Aga Khan University, SOAS, and at the Sotheby’s Institute and Birkbeck College.
She completed her doctorate in the Department of Art and Archaeology at SOAS in 2001 and has worked for a number of organisations with important Iranian collections, including the Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan Collection in Geneva, the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin and the British Museum in London. She has also taught at university level at The Aga Khan University, SOAS, and at the Sotheby’s Institute and Birkbeck College.
