Bhai Ram Singh, born in the village of Rasulpur, near Batala, in the Gurdaspur District of the state of the Punjab, North West India.  Singh trained as a carpenter before becoming a successful architect and Vice-Principal of the Mayo School of Art in Lahore, which he designed. In 1885-7 he worked with Lockwood Kipling, Principal of the Mayo School and father of the writer Rudyard Kipling, in decorating the Indian passage and ballroom at Bagshot Park for the Duke of Connaught.
His fame led to a commission to design the decoration of Queen Victoria’s ‘new room’ – the Durbar Room at Osborne on the Isle of Wight. The Queen met him on site in January 1891 and noted that he was ‘a very intelligent, pleasant, nice man, a Seikh [sp. 'Sikh']; we looked at sketches he had made for the decoration of the room’. In 1911 King George V made him an MVO (Member of the Royal Victorian Order).

Signed and dated: Rudolf Swoboda 92.