Notes

Gandhāran sculpture was made for the half-light of shrines and the raking sun of courtyards, and its heads are modelled for light that comes from one side. The long upper lids, the waves of the hair and the turn of the mouth are all shallow forms; they come alive in shadow and disappear under flat, frontal light.

At home, put a head at or a little below eye level and light it from above and to one side — a desk lamp placed a foot away at forty-five degrees is enough to show you the difference. Turn the head a few degrees on its stand until the shadow falls into the far eye. It will look like a different object.

X-ray fluorescence is the standard non-destructive test for gold in the trade. The instrument fires X-rays at a small spot on the surface and reads the energies that come back, which are specific to each element. What it gives you is the composition of the surface where it was pointed: so much gold, so much silver, so much copper. We print that reading in every gold entry, together with the karat it corresponds to.

What it cannot tell you is what lies beneath. A surface reading is not a fire assay, and a piece whose surface has been enriched or gilded will read higher than its core. Where the instrument records something unexpected — mercury, for instance, which can remain at the surface after certain kinds of gilding and goldsmithing — we print that too, as found, and leave you to ask us about it.

Some of the earliest images people made of themselves were small figures of this kind: flat violin shapes from Anatolia, broad-hipped women from the Near East, pinched faces with goggling eyes from the Indus. They were household things, made in great numbers, and their makers reduced the body to a few decisive forms — a neck, shoulders, hips, a pair of eyes.

That economy is why they look so modern, and why they sit so well in contemporary rooms. The figures we offer are new, made in these manners; we group them by the tradition they follow, not by any claim about where or when they were made.

Dust the heads and figures with a soft, dry brush — a clean make-up brush is ideal — and never with water or polish, which will darken a matt surface unevenly and cannot be undone. Keep them off windowsills and away from heating vents, and check once in a while that the rod of a stand is still seated firmly.

Gold needs almost nothing: a soft cloth, and warm water with a drop of washing-up liquid if a ring has been worn hard. Take rings off before handling cleaning products or chlorinated water. Beads are best kept apart from gold and from each other, so that harder pieces do not scratch softer ones.