A Persian Paradise: Vita and Harold in Iran 1925-1927

with Nicci Obholzer

Reflections on Sissinghurst’s exhibition “A Persian Paradise: Vita and Harold in Iran 1925-1927”, held between October 2023 and May 2024.

Thanks to Royal Oak Foundation funding, Sissinghurst was able to get its large photographic archive digitised.  This included Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West’s ‘Persia’ and ‘Bakhtiari’ albums, which enabled some really high-res ‘zooming in’ on what are otherwise very small photographs.  Through collaboration with BIPS members Lindsay Allen, Firuza Melville and Charles Melville, as well as other academics from UCL, the Chester Beatty in Dublin and the V&A, we were able to learn so much more about Sissinghurst’s Iranian collection.  Vita and Harold’s writings, as well as of their contemporaries, also made new sense once their Iranian context was restored.  The resulting “A Persian Paradise: Vita and Harold in Iran 1925-1929” exhibition, sponsored by BIPS and the Iran Society, became Sissinghurst’s most visited exhibition ever, reaching coverage in national and international television and print media.  Nicci will reflect on the new research which led to this exhibition, and where this takes Sissinghurst’s new understanding of its collection and of that cadre of people connected to Iran in the early 1920s.

About the speaker:

Nicci Obholzer is part of the Collections Team at Sissinghurst Castle Garden.  This is a National Trust property most famous for its garden but, under Nicci’s curatorship, is beginning to ‘take down from the shelves’ and unpack the histories of its owners, Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson.  As Harold was a diplomat, politician and writer, the couple travelled widely and this profound exposure to foreign cultures is evident in the collection within the house, within their writing, and also, through Nicci’s ongoing research, within the garden.  Nicci recently co-curated with BIPS member, Dr Lindsay Allen, “A Persian Paradise: Harold and Vita in Iran 1925-1927”, which made many new discoveries about Sissinghurst’s collection, uncovering the extraordinary effect Iran had on their aesthetic and imaginary world. Nicci has also worked at the National Trust’s Smallhythe Place and Lamb House – the houses of actresses and writers – and has a strong interest in women’s lives in the early twentieth century.  Before that, Nicci worked at the Freud Museum in London and the House of Lords.

Above: A snuff box gifted to Arthur Nicolson from Naser al-Din Shah Qajar in 1888 in the Persian Paradise exhibition at Sissinghurst, Kent.

To the left: ‘Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam with the Persian Originals’ translated into English by Edward Fitzgerald, retranslated into Persian, at the Persian Paradise Exhibition, Sissinghurst, Kent.