?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
DESIGNER UNKNOWN LONDON / AIR - INDIA. Circa 1962. 39 3/4x26 1/4 inches, 101x66 3/4 cm. Mehra Printers, Bombay. Condition A-: repaired tears, minor creases and restoration at edges. Air India's world-renowned and recognized corporate icon, the Maharaja, was born in 1946, the inspired product of Air India's commercial director, Bobby Kooka, and Umesh Rao, an artist with the Mumbai branch of J. Walter Thompson Ltd. "The Maharaja began merely as a rich Indian potentate, symbolizing graciousness and high living. And somewhere along the line his creators gave him a distinctive personality, his outsized moustache, the striped turban and his aquiline nose . . . Air-India calls him the Maharaja for want of a better description. But his blood isn't blue. He may look like royalty, but he isn't royal . . . Today, this naughty, diminutive Maharaja of Air-India has become a world figure. He can be a lover boy in Paris, a sumo wrestler in Tokyo, a pavement artist, a Red Indian, a monk. He can effortlessly flirt with the beauties of the world. And most importantly, he can get away with it all. Simply, because he is the Maharaja" (The Chandigarh Tribune, July 17, 2005).
