C&L Shows
Building the Past: An architect collector
Antiquities
2025

Overview
Sohrabji K Bhedwar was one of the great India-based collectors of South Indian and Nepalese bronzes. He also built a significant collection of miniatures. Writing of Bhedwar’s bronzes in a famous 1950 essay published in Marg, the legendary taste-maker Karl Khandalavala was clear in his view that it would “surely form the best private collection of metal images in the country. It is a collection built up over a period of thirty years with great discrimination…”
Bhedwar was also a leading architect, co-founding Bhedwar & Bhedwar, whose buildings included the iconic Eros Cinema, Churchgate, completed in 1938 and situated prominently opposite the entrance to Churchgate Station.
This is the first time since the collector’s death that so many objects
from his collection have been displayed in public, providing a wonderful opportunity to understand the collecting logic of this foundational figure of 20th century connoisseurship in India.
Chatterjee & Lal is thrilled to announce that the gallery has recently become a registered dealer of antiquities making us well placed to exhibit and deal in the ever expanding antiques market, now stretching from the inception of art making in the subcontinent up till the moment of early modernism.