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Of the fall and rise of art mart

It must have been about a decade ago when I stumbled, quite literally, into Dukan in Bangalore, after cajoling various people into pointing out places that dealt in antiques. Interestingly, most such places in what was then still the Garden City, operated from homes, so you had to ring doorbells, state your intent, answer cross-sounding queries from servants before being let in, and Dukan was no exception.

Except, here was no artificially weathered furniture masquerading as the old thing; the ceramic collection and a few other pieces were genuine finds, and there were enough mounted etchings and lithographs to keep you engrossed, even if you got the feeling that old books had paid the price to end up on collectors' walls instead of in the hands of readers.

This week, Dukan gave birth to its next sibling: the pretentious sounding Bid & Hammer, an auction house with M Maher Dadha as its chairman and managing director. The Dadhas, entrepreneurial immigrants from Rajasthan with a history of dealing in chiefly pharmaceuticals, were also keen buyers from the rajwadas of yore, ending up with a fabulous collection of jewellery and collectible art.

In Delhi, where he previewed selected works that were auctioned on Thursday in Bangalore, Dadha says his interest was never triggered from the point of view of selling anything. It was, he says, his wife who started dealing in a bit of antiquarian stuff in the mid-nineties in a purely amateurish way.

Later, he decided it could be a full-fledged business opportunity, and following the success of auction houses in the past years, set things in motion towards this, his first auction which flags off his expectation of doing 4-5 sales annually to begin with, growing to 10-12 sales in a couple of years time.

A consumer fair in Coimbatore. Insets: Meher Dadha (Bottom) and Madhu Dadha (Top) Text: Kishore Singh Also read: Awesome money is chasing Indian art

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