the long story

We discovered God prints during the first days of our first trip to India. They were everywhere. Although at first we knew nothing about them, little by little, as we noticed differences in style and printing technique, we began to figure out which were newer, older, and older still. For us the oldest were the most beautiful. We desperately wanted to find a beautiful old print of Lakshmi, and of Ganesh, that we could hang in our home. That’s how it began.

Asking around, we were told where we could find a few God print merchants. On our way to the first we naively imagined looking through piles of old prints and pulling out our favorites. No such luck. Instead we found tiny stalls filled with new over the top kitschy prints, printed in super bright colors on metallic foils (these shops, like little Hindu Disneylands, were fun,
but these were not the prints we wanted).

We became more determined (actually, we started to become obsessed with them) and now decided that antique shops would be the logical place to look, but we soon learned that antique shops are almost nonexistent in India. Ask for them and you’ll be sent to shops filled with brass dancing Shivas and Pashmina shawls – every time ( on their business cards these dealers call themselves “manufacturers of antiques”)!

Through perseverance (several years worth), we finally found our sources, a handful of antique dealers, who actually sell antiques, with stacks of old framed God prints. But it’s still not easy, and it gets harder each year. Flipping through these prints, clack, clack, clack, like a record collector at a box of LP’s, most are rejected. This one’s cut down, that one has brown water stains, too new, too faded, corners missing, white mold, worm holes, fused to glass, etc., etc., etc. Considering these prints have been framed flush against the glass for 80, 90, 100 years in a country where, at monsoon time, there’s 100% humidity for several months a year, it’s really a miracle that ANY of the very old prints have survived in good shape.

On our last trip, in December 06/January 07, we discovered some new dangers which are now threatening the survival of the antique God prints that have made it this far. In the last few years old lithographs of Hindu Gods have become very collectable in India (not only are there many more Indian collectors, but it has also become very fashionable to hang these prints in hip designer clothing shops and “boutique” hotels). Some Indian antique dealers, in their effort to take full advantage of this strong market, are adding little “improvements” to these prints and are ruining them (for me, anyway) in the process.

Some dealers are gluing their prints down onto cardboard. Some are sewing fabric to them. Back in the 1910’s, 20’s, 30’s there was a tradition of decorating God prints with “stitching,” by, for instance, sewing a little pleated red silk “sari” on top of Lakshmi’s printed red sari, but now, because collectors pay more for prints with stitching, dealers are putting new stitching on old prints. Naturally this means piercing hundreds of holes in the print.

In one antique shop we visited “Ravi Varma” was written in ballpoint pen across the corner of every print. This is the most famous name in old God prints, sort of like the name Tiffany for collectors of old stained glass lamps. As a matter of fact, most Indian antique dealers call all old God prints Ravi Varma prints. Ravi Varma (1848-1906), a painter, and probably India’s most famous artist, set up a lithography workshop (Ravi Varma Press) which published God prints, printed from limestone blocks, from 1894 until the 1930’s (switching over to the photo-offset technique sometime in the 1940’s). Was this antique dealer trying to fake a signature? I’m not sure. In any case these prints, no matter who the artist or which press they’re from, were never hand signed. Never.

Also, on this last trip, we saw our first fake, a brand new photo-offset reproduction of a Ravi Varma print from the 1910’s, at an antique shop in Udaipur (in an old frame and behind dirty glass). So there you have it – water damaged, cut down, glued down, pierced, eaten by bugs – you name it. If it were not for the fact that we love India, if we just traveled to India to look for antique prints, We probably wouldn’t return – the prospects of finding enough prints to make a trip worth while are pretty slim. But, of course, we do love India, we will return ( soon as we’re back from one trip I begin counting the days until the next), and we will continue to search for beautiful old prints, for our collection, and for yours.