Art in profession

An expert in Islamic, modern Arabic and Iranian art, William Lawrie didn't grow up surrounded by art. The Christie's specialist says he was just fascinated by other cultures. Based in Dubai, he roams the Middle East in search of new pieces for the renowned auction house.

Even before the internet was invented, there were more connections between East and West than we could dream about. Some tenuous - like the tantalisingly familiar taste of a Mexican mole to the Indian palate. Some sublime - like the twisting alleys and whispering arches of Venice, so akin to any medieval Islamic city.

The common fabric that swathes these disparate cultures is Islam, of course. For some 800 years, from the 8th century to the 15th century AD, Al Andalus - the part of the Spain in Islamic hands - was a cultural, artistic and scientific crossroads where different cultures lived and worked and exchanged ideas in harmony.

Much of William Lawrie's work as a specialist in the Islamic, Modern Arab and Iranian Art department of Christie's Dubai is about bringing these fragile and forgotten medieval connections alive for a modern world.

Talking to him, one gets to know that it was Muslim Spain that kept learning alive while Europe was submerged in the Dark Ages.

It was in the Islamic East that the Renaissance began to bloom, as the knowledge of the ancient Greek and Roman civilisations was preserved in the great Moorish libraries and transported to the West again.

Serendipity is a big part of the auction house trade and fortune favours those who are prepared. Lawrie - with his taste for travel and adventure, tempered by a ken for scholarship - best exemplifies the auction house specialists, who are always ready to infect one with their passion for the subject of their choice.

When 29-year-old Lawrie retells the story of one particular Christie's find - a 14th century Chinese Quran that he unearthed - it sounds more like a fascinating historic and literary whodunnit than the story of the sale of an antique.

Again, it underscores the fact that paper did not directly journey from China, where it was invented, to Gutenberg's printing press.

The skill of papermaking rested with the Muslim world for 400 years in the interim. Islamic calligraphers took manuscript-making to a sublime art form, influenced by the Chinese.

While the Quran may have found its way to Christie's offices, many other goodies have to be actively sought by their inhouse specialists.

In this respect, Lawrie is a modern-day Marco Polo, a backpacker with a big budget and great education, who scours the region unearthing rare treasures for his employers.

Lawrie read History of Art at Edinburgh University, specialising in Islamic Art, and graduating with first class Honours. As a schoolboy he had spent summers in Cairo, and after graduating lived there for a time studying Arabic, the Islamic architecture of the old city, and rewriting his dissertation for publication.

After a jab at employment with a prominent dealer, he was recruited by Christie's Islamic Art Department in June 2004.

Since then, he has helped organise the exhibition marking the opening of the Christie's office in Dubai in April 2005 and led the sale of the important collection of curtains from The Two Holy Mosques exhibited there.

More recently, his discovery of the oldest, and possibly the grandest, Chinese Quran in existence was one of the highlights of Islamic Week in London 2006.

From September 2005, Lawrie spent the majority of his time travelling throughout the region to prepare for the inaugural sale of Christie's Dubai in May 2006.

Based on the success of this sale and the unprecedented enthusiasm of collectors, the category of Contemporary Arab and Iranian Art has now become a permanent feature on Christie's auction calendar.

Lawrie recently relocated to Dubai as Christie's first specialist resident in the Middle East.

The work of people like Lawrie reminds us that the East and the West have more in common than we often realise. Through his enthusiasm and passion for Islamic art, people from both regions are developing a greater awareness of this shared artistic heritage and the ties this nurtures.

I

I have always been interested in the Mediterranean world because it was the meeting place of the Christian West and the Muslim East.

I was inspired to visit India by what my stepfather had told me; he had done the same trip when he was my age and his descriptions and stories were so vivid and interesting, I was convinced to go there. He had such a great time and learned so much from his trip, that I had to visit India as well.

I got married four days before last year's auction in Dubai (I have been married for less than a year!). Despite having arranged the wedding date after much planning, as it happened, the day after the wedding we were on a plane to Dubai and I was getting ready for the first sale.

I have to say I was more nervous about the first sale than I was about my wedding. My wife, Alma, is a banker.

With a deeper interest in Islamic and Indian art, I have also now developed an interest in anecdotal history, in meeting people and talking to them. I now possess a confidence in doing this.

ME

Me and the Arab world:
The first time I was in the Middle East was when I was 14 or 15. One of my best friends at Eton College boarding school was Egyptian. So I spent my summer holidays in Cairo, and out on the Mediterranean coast, in Alexandria. That was my first experience of the Arab world.

On my first trip to Cairo I was impressed by the crowds, the souks and the Khan I Khalili (bazaar). In many ways, Cairo seems like it has not changed in thousands of years.

I was also struck by the vibrant urban life of the city - the multi-layered excitement of seeing donkeys alongside cars blaring their horns on the streets.

Years later when I went to Cairo to study Arabic I was interested not just in the past and history of the city, but also modern life. That's what got me interested in Arab art in the first place.

There were so many interconnections in medieval times, both cultural and economic, that are missed today. For instance the entire Renaissance was probably kick-started by the translation of books from Arabic into Latin.

That happened in Spain where people could speak both Arabic and Latin and the innovations took place in Italy. And it gets better.

The reason why they translated these books into Latin was because the Islamic world was the custodian of the knowledge of the Greeks and Romans.

They had translated these books originally from Greek and Latin into Arabic in Baghdad in the 3rd century Hijra (10th century AD). Those books were taken to Cordoba in Spain and re-translated into Latin. That's the way knowledge was transferred. And one of the main reasons why I was interested in Islamic history.

Me and the arts:
I am the first person in my family to have anything to do with the arts.

I come from a family of doctors, soldiers and lawyers - fairly different from what I do for a living. I grew up in London and went to Eton College, where I met a lot of people from different cultures.

From quite an early age I enjoyed travel and art. The common factor among Christie's specialists, especially those that deal with the arts, is that you have to have a deep, ingrained passion for it. That's something that comes from quite an early age.

Whether it's going to art museums and showing a bit more interest than the average kid in the paintings, or simply enjoying the details in palaces and stately homes.

From an early age I was interested in different lands, cultures, and history (another subject that is of great importance to an art specialist).

So when I went to university, I studied art history, specialising in Islamic and Indian art. I went off to Cairo for a year after that, because it was the best place in the Middle East to study Islamic art then.

Cairo is a crazy, madcap, fun city. It's a city of extremes where modernity is side-by-side with the ancient. One can get quite flabbergasted by it. I started getting interested in the contemporary culture of the Arab world - it's impossible not to in a place like that.

I started going to art galleries and being interested in contemporary Arabic art. After spending over a year there, I returned to the UK and started working with a dealer of Islamic and Indian art. After a couple of years there, I joined Christie's.

Me and art history:
I had an active imagination when I was a child. When I was very young, my father read to me tales of Greek and Roman myths. I guess my interest sparked from there.
I did not grow up surrounded by art.

My interest in Islamic art springs from quite a different source, unlike someone from Europe perhaps, who grows up surrounded by Picasso and Monet. It comes from being interested in cultures other than my own. A lot of it also comes from my interest in history and travel.

Islamic art is an inexact term, but it's the best approximation we have at the moment. It takes in anything of aesthetic value - be it calligraphy, painting, metalwork or woodwork - made during the Islamic period starting from 1st century Hijra (7th century AD), up until the 19th century AD.

The Islamic world is a lot bigger than the Arab world. It extends from Spain up to Southeast Asia in the east, and from Kazakhstan in the north to Tanzania in the south.

With Islamic art, what I found quite fascinating is that much of it has a shared history with Western art. To start off with, Islamic art represented the mingling of late Roman art and Persian art, with an influence of Arab Islamic art.

Roman art also inspired Western art. Islamic and Western art then took quite different routes in their development, but their interlocking histories interested and inspired me immensely.

I studied art history at Edinburgh, spending quite a bit of time in India after leaving school. I was fortunate to be taught by Professor Hillenbrand, a first-rate art history professor whose students are pretty much on top of their field in university.

I was interested in Islamic and Indian art anyway, but because he was such an enthusiastic and knowledgeable teacher, he got a lot of people interested in the subject of art history.

Art history is a subset of history, expressing trends in world events as expressed through visual media, rather than just political events. It's a kind of social history in visual terms. The work I am doing now is important in that respect. Islamic art is essential to the history of Islam.

You wouldn't have anything other than a very superficial understanding of Islamic art if you didn't know the history of the Islamic world. With contemporary art it's also important to understand the trends in fashion and thinking.

Me and coming to Dubai:
I was already potentially interested in modern Arab art. So when we opened our Dubai office some two years ago, I was already investigating the possibility of having contemporary Arab art in auction.

When the office opened, we had such a great response from the people here, that it seemed an excellent opportunity to try something new.

We thought of having some auctions of modern Arab and Iranian art. I have spent the better part of two years doing this (taking modern Arab art to auction).

The increased interest, response (and workload) has meant that I have now relocated to Dubai, as it is easier to make this my base rather than London.

MYSELF

One of the high points of your career must have been the sale of the 14th-century Quran from Mongol China. What was the story behind this exceptional work?
A unique manuscript, it is the only Quran from the period of the Mongol rule in China (Yuan Dynasty). Its calligraphy and decorative layout has no known parallel, the start of each sura (chapter) appearing in highly individual formats and lettering. The Quran is dated AH 737/AD 1337.

We have various ways we get pieces into Christie's. One is by people sending us photographs. Sometimes people walk into our offices and put things on the table. Sometimes there are tip-offs.

Once somebody walked into our London office with a CD full of really fuzzy images of the Chinese Quran. I have to say it's extremely rare for someone to walk into our office with anything this great. It does happen but the occasions are few and far between.

I saw the images and thought it's really quite peculiar. I did a bit of research from the grainy images on the CD and tried to work out which century this Quran belonged to.

It's a 14th century Quran. It came from the private collection from a family in the Middle East. But working out where it originally came from and when it was made proved to be slightly more difficult. This is where understanding Islamic history becomes important.

People travelled a lot in the 14th century. From the style, we thought it originally came from Iran. We then placed its origin from slightly further east, from what is now Central Asia, what is now Uzbekistan.

Then there were certain stylistic clues. It's not in the major elements, but you have to often look for the little things that are so peculiar - like the illumination, for instance.

That will lead you somewhere else. But there were certain details, features that you wouldn't find anywhere else but in Chinese Qurans of a slightly later period, some 50 years later. That pushed us further east.

Details like the (style of) headings … but these features were like what you would see perhaps in a prototype, not yet stylistically well defined as you would see in Qurans of a slightly later date.

It had a transitional feeling rather than a finished piece. Then there were the colours and illuminated panels. It is a process of deduction which you could only have a sense of if you have a sense of history, and who is influencing whom at what time.

Any other interesting and historic pieces you have dealt with?
At our first exhibition in Dubai we bought a collection of six curtains that covered the Holy Ka'aba in Makkah. It's a cube-shaped cover with decorative panels on it.

The most important of these curtains is the one on the front door. Every year, this cover is changed and then the royal family of Saudi Arabia gives the panels to visiting dignitaries. About 200 years ago, these panels would have gone to nobles.

The main consideration in valuing these panels is their condition. Since they are made of silk textile with gold and silver thread, the silk panels get brittle over time and perish. Not all of them survive. The best collection is in the Topkapi Palace Istanbul.

At the Christie's sale this year, we offered by far the best collection (of curtains) to appear in an auction as well as the three oldest pieces to be offered in the open market.

Ever since James Christie took his first sale in the year 1766 in London, Indian art has been an important part of Christie's. What's the situation today, two and a half centuries later?
Indian art for the last five years, especially the last two or three years, has achieved incredible prices in auctions in New York, Hong Kong and even India. The prices have risen appreciably over the last three years.

That's from increased interest from collectors both within India and Indian and non-Indian collectors outside India. Mainstream collectors of Western post-war contemporary art have started collecting Indian art as well.

It's also a reflection of how the global market for contemporary art has risen. Indian art prices have risen in the same way that prices for Chinese art have risen.