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Exhibition in London to Celebrate Lockwood Kipling | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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Formative experience: The Great Exhibition, India No 4, by Joseph Nash, circa 1851. Kipling saw the exhibition as a boy Royal Collection Trust


London – Victoria and Albert Museum will launch Saturday a special exhibition to celebrate the artist Lockwood Kipling, who made plenty of artistic contributions to the museum. Kipling was one of the eminent artists influenced by the trend of arts and crafts that emerged in Britain between 1860 and 1910 and who focused on cooperation among designers, architects, and neighborhoods of traditional crafts.

The exhibition has been entitled “Lockwood Kipling: Arts and Crafts in Punjab and London” – it will show the paintings and portraits he drew in India, along with many of the museum possessions, which were purchased by the artist. While Kipling was deeply interested in maintaining crafts and mainly the Indian ones, visitors will have the opportunity to see Indian jewelry, furniture, and embroideries made with high proficiency.

Kipling was born in Yorkshire in 1837 and worked as an architect and sculptor, he embraced passion towards Indian crafts following his visit to the “Great Exhibition” organized under the patronage of King Albert and his wife Queen Victoria in 1815.

The exhibition on Lockwood Kipling will be launched with a bouquet of paintings featuring pictures from the “Great Exhibition” and the Indian pavilion with its fancy possessions. The event, which will feature the traditional Indian crafts will also introduce gold bracelets studded with diamonds; such works are expected to shed lights on the skillfulness of jewelry manufacture that prospered in India.

The exhibition tells many important phases of the artists’ life through a number of possessions, mainly his journey in India where he lived 10 years in Bombay and worked as ab instructor in an art school. The latter moved to work in Lahore, Punjab’s capital, where he served as head of the art collegesand museums. At that time, Kipling noticed that the quality of Indian’s handicrafts deteriorated, so he travelled in many trips to look for the best Indian works and registered them.

Among the pieces showed in the museum are portraits which he drew for a number of crafters from the countries he visited. Kipling’s contributions in India marked footprint in architecture too – the artist and his students implemented a number of buildings we see in movies in Lahore and Bombay.

After his retirement in 1893, Kipling returned to England and helped his son who was writing his book “The Jungle Book” as he drew images and some of the sculptures that feature their life in India.

The exhibition will be concluded with a number of furniture works made by the artist, which were used in Queen Victoria’s palace.