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The F.D. Alpaiwalla Museum was founded in 1952 and houses the collection of the bullion trader Framji Dadabhoy Alpaiwalla and the archaeologist Jamshedji Maneckji Unvala.
The museum is named after Framji Dadabhoy Alpaiwalla, an antique collector whose passion was such that he ran out of space in his eleven-room home to host his collection. ‘Most collectors devote a percentage of their income to art collection. Alpaiwalla exercised no such self-restraint,’ said Nivedita Mehta, the first Curator of the Museum. He donated his vast collection to the Bombay Parsi Punchayet, which set up the F.D. Alpaiwalla Museum.
Jamshedji Maneckji Unvala (1888-1961) was a French-speaking scholar-priest and archaeologist. The Mission Archéologique de Susiane invited him to participate in the excavation at Susa under the French archaeologist Roland de Mecquenem. He excavated in Susa from 1927 to 1939, working on the ‘City of Artisans’ and Parthian and Sasanian sites. Unvala brought back from Susa, Proto-Elamite tablets, glazed bricks from the ‘Archer’s Freeze’ and several buff-coloured clay vases and pots. He excavated a Tower of Silence in Yazd, Iran and gifted the artefacts and objects to the F. D. Alpaiwalla Museum, Mumbai.
The F.D. Alpaiwalla Museum was founded in 1952 and houses the collection of the bullion trader Framji Dadabhoy Alpaiwalla and the archaeologist Jamshedji Maneckji Unvala.