I’m not sure exactly how I came across this book, “The Art of India” (1954) by Stella Kramrisch, but I’m pretty certain I read Allen Ginsberg talking about it.
That naturally led me to want to hunt down a copy. But this was at the tail of end research for “Retreat” when I was consciously attempting to dial back my focus on Eastern philosophy. Not an expensive book, really. But I satisfied myself with finding a PDF of it on archive.org.
A couple of weeks ago, I was hanging around in my wife’s study. Disturbing her when she was trying to write something on Le Corbusier, probably… As I was looking through her bookshelf, my eye caught upon the spine of this copy of “The Art of India.”
When my grandfather, the art collector Michael Ingram died, once their family’s house sold, the entire family was invited, almost as though we were vultures, to take whatever we wanted from the building. I was very fond of my grandparents and remember being a bit dazed. I think I took only one item, a small iron frying pan that I remembered my beloved grandmother frying me an egg in.
Thank god, Mrs Ingram had her wits about her. She took the Kramrisch book from his massive library of art books. In its frontispiece there is this review notice from Phaidon, announcing the publication to the reviews department of The Illustrated London News, which was our family business. Unprompted, and without any unseemly pleading from me, she gave me the book.
My grandfather took a deep interest in the culture of the far east. This ran in the family. His uncle was Collingwood “Cherry” Ingram – famous for saving for Japan one of their cherry trees.
By 1926, he was a world authority on Japanese cherries and was asked to address the Cherry Society in Japan on their national tree. It was on this visit that he was shown a painting of a beautiful white cherry, then thought to be extinct in Japan. He recognised it as one he had seen in a moribund state in a Sussex garden, the result of an early introduction from Japan. He had taken cuttings and so was able to re-introduce it to the gardening world as ‘Taihaku’, the name meaning ‘Great White Cherry’. His 1948 book Ornamental Cherries is a standard work.
Wikipedia
His father Herbert Ingram, son of William Ingram, was a collector of Chinese porcelain, whose collection is the heart of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford’s collection.
The arrival of the Sir Herbert Ingram’s generous gift of over 3,000 Chinese and Japanese objects to the Museum of Eastern Art in 1956, then housed in the Indian Institute, more than doubled its original holdings. In 1962, these were moved to become part of the collection of the Ashmolean Museum.
Eastern Art Online
In spite of his father’s generosity, their house was still full of lovely ancient pots, urns, and vases. But my grandfather was also fascinated by Eastern thought. I remember this quote from Confucius pinned up in their kitchen:
“If there is righteousness in the heart, there will be beauty in the character.
Confucius
If there is beauty in the character, there will be harmony in the home.
If there is harmony in the home, there will be order in the nations.
When there is order in the nations, there will peace in the world.”
This is, of course, the same call for “bottom-up” action which bewitched the counterculture as it rebelled against the political activism of the previous generation.
There are two particularly lovely pictures of the Buddha in the book.
And an exquisite “Tree of Life of Knowledge” perfect for this blog.