London, October 26 (BNA) Two jeweled Mughal-era sunglasses and diamond and emerald lenses are expected to fetch up to $3.5 million each when they are auctioned in London on Wednesday.
Sotheby’s said the glasses were made by an unknown prince in the 17th century, with lenses of precious stones believed to promote spiritual enlightenment.
One pair, called Heaven’s Gate, features emerald lenses set in diamond-set frames. The second, called “Halo of Light,” has diamond lenses set in diamond-mounted frames. The lenses are said to date back to the 17th century while the frames date to the 19th century.
Alexandra Roy, a specialist in Islamic world arts at Sotheby’s, said, Reuters reported.
“The diamonds came from the Golconda mines (in India) and at the Mughal court, these stones were cut from stones that would have originally weighed between two and three hundred carats…reworked in their present nineteenth-century landscape-like style.”
The pair are being offered at Sotheby’s art auction in the Islamic world and India on Wednesday, with an estimated price of between 1.5 million and 2.5 million pounds ($2 million – $3.4 million).
“We have to be very careful when it comes to the source of a lot, we’ve already known about these glasses for a very long time, since the 1980s,” Roy said.
“They are subject to strong internal due diligence before we can put them up for sale. They have been scrutinized by historians so they have been published in the academic world before. This is the first time we have put them up for sale but among academia they are well known.”
HF