Princess Esra lent a royal touch to the release of the Treasures of the Deccan – Jewels of the Nizam in Hyderabad’s Chowmahalla Palace on Thursday evening. “I can imagine Alexander Jacob walk into this very same Chowmahalla Palace holding in his hand the 184.5 carat diamond and climb the stairs to meet the Sixth Nizam Mahbub Ali Khan,” said Usha Bala Krishnan, who has co-authored the two-volume work with Deepthi Sashidharan.

The book documents the fabulous collection of the Nizam’s Jewellery, some of which is currently locked up in vaults of banks, while other pieces are in private collections.

The authors made a short presentation about how the book has evolved.

“Earlier, I worked on the Jewels of the Nizam which was more in the nature of a catalogue.

Launching this book in Hyderabad is special, as the jewellery has a special, almost metaphysical, connection to this place,” said Ms. Krishnan who is a well-known historian of jewellery and was commissioned by the Central Government before the jewels of Nizam were put on display in Hyderabad’s Salar Jung Museum in 2001.

“Matching some of the black-and-white photographs with the jewellery that the royalty was wearing at that time was an a-ha moment.

We discovered the jewels in private collection as well as what is known as Nizam’s Jewellery,” said Deepthi Sasidharan who trawled through a vast collection photographs to bring alive the story of Nizam’s jewellery.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> States> Telangana / by Special Correspondent / Hyderabad – November 30th, 2018