Sir Mangaldas Nathubhai

The Mangaldas Library

The third chapter in the multi-part auction series of the Estate of Sir Mangaldas Nathubhai turns to the shelves of his Girgaum and Malabar Hill homes — the quiet centre of a cultivated Bombay life. Known to the city as a philanthropist and reformer, Sir Mangaldas was also a deliberate collector — one who read about what he acquired. His library was a place of study as much as of leisure: Hamlet beside The Grammar of Ornament, scripture beside travelogues, manuals of craft beside memoirs of empire.

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Timepieces & Treasures from the Estate of Sir Mangaldas Nathubhai

If the porcelain of the previous chapter revealed Sir Mangaldas Nathubhai’s eye for refinement, the timepieces and sculptural treasures in the family capture the rhythm and sentiment of his world. Within the family homes at Girgaum, Malabar Hill, and later Commonwealth, these pieces measured the passing of hours and reflected the family’s cosmopolitan curiosity. Passed down and faithfully wound through four generations, they speak of precision, devotion, and inherited grace.

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Cricket Legends of Colonial India: The Mangaldas Family Autograph Book

Among the many treasures preserved in the Sir Mangaldas Nathubhai family collection is a slim, timeworn album belonging to his great-granddaughter Meenal. Its pages, still intact after a century, neatly inscribed with signatures and photographs, carry the imprints of cricketing legends from the early decades of the twentieth century.

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Elephants in Stone: Sir Mangaldas Nathubhai and Bombay’s Cultural Legacy

Walk through Bombay’s old neighbourhoods and you will still find elephants in stone. At Lamington Road and in Kalbadevi, they guard the façades of two of the city’s most storied theatres — Imperial and Bhangwadi. To most passersby, they are striking ornaments. In truth, they are the emblem of Sir Mangaldas Nathubhai and his family, whose motto “Wisdom over Riches” guided a life of philanthropy and civic reform in nineteenth-century Bombay.

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Porcelain from the Estate of Sir Mangaldas Nathubhai

The porcelains that once gleamed in Sir Mangaldas Nathubhai’s family homes reveal his lesser-known side as a deliberate collector. Now offered to the public for the first time, the Estate takes us back to 19th-century Bombay, when his Malabar Hill mansion stood as a social landmark. Within its halls, his studied collections—porcelain foremost among them, alongside books, clocks, and silverware—were displayed and admired by the city’s elite.

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Sir Mangaldas Nathubhai: The Renaissance Man of Bombay

Sir Mangaldas Nathubhai was one of the most dedicated reformers and philanthropists of nineteenth-century Bombay. Among the earliest Indians knighted by the British Crown for his service to education, healthcare, and civic reform, his legacy stands apart. More than a prosperous merchant, he belonged to the circle of Bombay’s emerging intelligentsia and played a significant role in the city’s wider social and political awakening.

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