A rare Indo-Portuguese mother of pearl and brass Dish, Gujarat, India, 17th Centuryof shallow

A rare Indo-Portuguese mother of pearl and brass Dish,

Gujarat, India, 17th Century

of shallow rounded form on a short foot, with petal-edged everted rim, fashioned on both sides with lobed and rectangular plaques in the form of a stylised lotus and secured by metal pins, 17.3cm diam x 2.5cm high, minor losses to underside



Footnote:

Gujarat, in Western India, was a centre for artisanal mother-of-pearl work that was in high demand both in the Mughal court and abroad. Records from the Grünes Gewölbe (Green Vault) in Dresden indicate that these wares were being imported to Europe from as early as the second quarter of the sixteenth century. Regarded as exotic and precious, they were exchanged as gifts within the palaces and courts of Europe, and although they were produced in functional western shapes (ewers, dishes, basins, etc), they were not used but displayed in cabinets of curiosity. The commissioning of such wares was particularly associated with the Portuguese who were the earliest European traders in western India, and examples are found in several Portuguese collections. Indeed Manuel I of Portugal and Francis I of France both have mother-of-pearl objects listed in their collections in 1522 and 1529 respectively. In Britain, Thomas Cromwell gave Henry VIII a mother-of-pearl ewer set in gold as New Year's gift in 1524 (Philippa Glanville, Silver in Tudor and Early Stuart England, 1997, p.319). Cf. Amin Jaffer, Luxury Goods from India, 2002, pp.38-39, no. 11, for an example of a basin in the Victoria and Albert Museum