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Lot Essay
“As we entered the doorway, the air was heavy with the rich fragrance of attar of roses. Through room after room, we were shown veritable treasure houses of Oriental luxuries in jewelry, rugs, furniture, and antiquities. Here was a precious jade-handled sword, the inlaying a lost art, that was already sold, and was to be exhibited at the St. Louis Art Fair.” (Charles Gallaudet Trumbull, A Pilgrimage to Jerusalem, 1905, 110).
The stern American evangelist Charles Gallaudet Trumbull was awestruck when, in 1904, he witnessed the splendour of “The Oriental Museum”, a luxurious boutique in the Abud Efendi Han in Mahmudpaşa, Istanbul. Run by the enterprising antique dealer Robert-Sadia Pardo, whose grandfather had produced gold fringes for Sultan Mahmud II's (r.1808-39) clothing, the Oriental Museum presented itself as a conduit between the increasingly impoverished great families of Istanbul, keen to sell their priceless antiques, and the rich and famous of the West. Among his enthusiastic clients were some of the great art patrons of the American Gilded Age - Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, Henry Walters, John Pierpont Morgan, and Charles Lang Freer, as well as institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Ayse Aldemir, ‘Ottoman Tastemaker Robert-Sadia Pardo and a Sixteenth-Century Prayer Rug in the Met’, Metropolitan Museum Journal 59, 2024, 48-50).
Walters was a particularly enthusiastic purchaser of Pardo’s luxurious antiques, acquiring in May 1903 what Pardo described as “a collection of Oriental Royal arms etc. which is unique and which in an ideal way represents the best workmanship of the golden period of art in Turkey and Persia” (Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Ms. W.848). The jewelled arms and armour acquired by Walters from the Oriental Museum are composed of multiple elements of various dates and origins, while at the same time showing a remarkable consistency in the quality and design of their gem settings. The distinctive setting of the often pale emeralds, rubies, and diamonds, which is found in several other groups of arms and armour collected by early 20th century, mostly American collectors, is not found in Turkish, Central, or Eastern European collections, and these enhancements may be attributed to a workshop associated with the Oriental Museum itself.
While the jade plaques were likely reused from older works of art, the rich gem-set elements of the present sword undoubtedly belong to the same group of luxurious weapons, which also counts among it a small collection of jewelled arms and armour acquired by Giovanni Pertinax Morosini (d. 1908), now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (23.232.1, .3-6, .8-9). The blade lacks the clearly identifiable gem-settings characteristic of this group, but the fact that it is identical to a blade on an Ottoman sword, also from the collection of Giovanni Pertinax Morosini and likely acquired from the Oriental Museum (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 32.75.300), suggests a common source accessible to Pardo.
There is a remote possibility that the present sword is the dazzling jade-hilted sword described by Trumbull. Writing of the arms acquired by Walters, Pardo wrote that “every object in the collection was made for the luxurious Shahs and Sultans and is embellished with all the magnificence with which one can associate these monarchs”. Perhaps in the wealthy industrialists of America’s Gilded Age, he had found the Shahs and Sultans of his day.
The stern American evangelist Charles Gallaudet Trumbull was awestruck when, in 1904, he witnessed the splendour of “The Oriental Museum”, a luxurious boutique in the Abud Efendi Han in Mahmudpaşa, Istanbul. Run by the enterprising antique dealer Robert-Sadia Pardo, whose grandfather had produced gold fringes for Sultan Mahmud II's (r.1808-39) clothing, the Oriental Museum presented itself as a conduit between the increasingly impoverished great families of Istanbul, keen to sell their priceless antiques, and the rich and famous of the West. Among his enthusiastic clients were some of the great art patrons of the American Gilded Age - Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, Henry Walters, John Pierpont Morgan, and Charles Lang Freer, as well as institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Ayse Aldemir, ‘Ottoman Tastemaker Robert-Sadia Pardo and a Sixteenth-Century Prayer Rug in the Met’, Metropolitan Museum Journal 59, 2024, 48-50).
Walters was a particularly enthusiastic purchaser of Pardo’s luxurious antiques, acquiring in May 1903 what Pardo described as “a collection of Oriental Royal arms etc. which is unique and which in an ideal way represents the best workmanship of the golden period of art in Turkey and Persia” (Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Ms. W.848). The jewelled arms and armour acquired by Walters from the Oriental Museum are composed of multiple elements of various dates and origins, while at the same time showing a remarkable consistency in the quality and design of their gem settings. The distinctive setting of the often pale emeralds, rubies, and diamonds, which is found in several other groups of arms and armour collected by early 20th century, mostly American collectors, is not found in Turkish, Central, or Eastern European collections, and these enhancements may be attributed to a workshop associated with the Oriental Museum itself.
While the jade plaques were likely reused from older works of art, the rich gem-set elements of the present sword undoubtedly belong to the same group of luxurious weapons, which also counts among it a small collection of jewelled arms and armour acquired by Giovanni Pertinax Morosini (d. 1908), now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (23.232.1, .3-6, .8-9). The blade lacks the clearly identifiable gem-settings characteristic of this group, but the fact that it is identical to a blade on an Ottoman sword, also from the collection of Giovanni Pertinax Morosini and likely acquired from the Oriental Museum (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 32.75.300), suggests a common source accessible to Pardo.
There is a remote possibility that the present sword is the dazzling jade-hilted sword described by Trumbull. Writing of the arms acquired by Walters, Pardo wrote that “every object in the collection was made for the luxurious Shahs and Sultans and is embellished with all the magnificence with which one can associate these monarchs”. Perhaps in the wealthy industrialists of America’s Gilded Age, he had found the Shahs and Sultans of his day.