Elamite Silver Pendant Pair

Restrung designer necklace with elegant bead arrangement, comprising spherical white agate beads, oval banded agate beads, with later gold interstitial slender bicone beads; modern clasp. 82.5 grams, 64 cm long



Acquired 1970s-1996. Property of a North American collector. London collection, 2016.

The squat, bulbous body standing on conical tripod feet, slender neck with everted mouth and integral handle with pinched lug at the top, likely representing an animal form, small applied pellets around the lower body. 537 grams, 21 cm high



Ex Rabi gallery, 1990s. Private collection of Iranian art.

The majority displaying standing figures in repoussé to both faces of a lozenge-shaped body; five formed as naked male figures with hands clasped in front of the waist; a single bead formed as a full-bodied figure wearing a headdress, one hand held over the pubic region, which is pierced; sheet-gold over bituminous cores; from a ritual headdress; most complete. 78.32 grams total, 34-43 mm



Acquired 1970s onwards. Private collection of Michael O'Hara, Cambridgeshire, UK. Ex private collection of Benjamin Hyde-Smith, Hertfordshire, UK.

Although the Buddha himself never visited Gandhara, with the passage of time the area became a veritable holy land for his followers. Mahayanism – a liberal and progressive school of Buddhism – flourished in Gandhara and laid emphasis among other things, on the transformation of the Buddha into a great mythological, almost eternal, god, and on the deification of future Buddhas as holding providences. In the visual arts, Buddha was permitted for the first time to be represented in human form.