A RARE piece of Indian art owned by a Ribble Valley collector is on display in Whalley.

The painted cloth, known as a parh, is thought to date from the beginning of the 20th century and depicts the story of the Rajasthani hero Pabuji.

It would have been used to accompany the recitation of a verse about Pabuji's exploits.

The artwork is owned by keen art collector John Chadwick (pictured) of Moor Edge, Whalley, who bought it in a sale in Clitheroe in the early 1990s.

He said: "Most of my paintings are English so this was something unusual. It was rolled up and I turned a corner of it back and thought it looked interesting, without realising how long it was and how difficult it would be to frame. It is about 15 feet long."

The painting spends most of its time rolled up on top of a wardrobe in Mr Chadwick's house, as he has nowhere suitable to display it, but it is on display at Whalley Library until the end of the month.

Mr Chadwick, a retired company director and founding member and past president of the Todmorden Antiquarian Society, said he had no idea how much the painting was worth.

In a bid to find out more about it, he wrote to the Victoria and Albert museum in London. Rosemary Crill, deputy curator of the museum's Indian and South East Asian collection, said such cloths were painted in Bilwara in Southern Rajasthan, India, and used in Marwar, the area around Jodhpur.

She said: "Very few surviving cloth paintings of this type date from before the early 20th century as they were traditionally thrown into the lake at Pushkar when they were worn out."

The museum has two similar items in its collection, but like Mr Chadwick, it is too short of space to have them on permanent display.

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