Two Indo-Portuguese Mother-of-Pearl Dishes, Gujarat, 17th Century

slight difference in diameter

1 1/4 x 8 in. and 1 3/8 x 7 7/8 in.

2.8 x 20.3 cm and 3.5 x 19.8 cm

Literature

Jaffer, Amin, Luxury Goods from India. The Art of the Indian Cabinetmaker, London 2002

Museu de São Roque, Lisbon, The Heritage of Rauluchantim, exhibtion catalogue, 1996

Seipel, W. (ed.), Exotica. Portugals Entdeckungen im Spiegel fürstlicher Kunst- und Wunderkammern der Renaissance, exhibtion catalogue, Kunsthistorischesmuseum, Vienna 2000

Catalogue note
Mother-of-Pearl objects created in the northwest Indian region of Gujarat are known to have reached Europe through Portuguese traders already in the first half of the 16th century and immediately became prized treasures of scholarly collections and princely kunstkammern. The earliest documented example is a rosewater ewer and large basin with elaborate Nuremberg silver gilt mounts of circa 1540 in the Dresden Green Vaults, first recorded in an inventory of 1586 (Seipel 2000, cat. no. 67 p.160-61).

A pair of small dishes of comparable size and design to the offered lot are in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, where they form part of an ensemble with a pair of ewers of identical form to lot 114 in this sale (Jaffer 2002, cat. no.11 p.38-39). The V & A collection also has a further dish of this model not accompanied by a ewer and with English silver gilt mounts marked London 1621-22 (Jaffer 2002, cat. no.13 p.42). The larger number of small dishes of this form that have survived relative to other type of Gujarat ware suggests they were acquired both individually and as part of sets with ewers or other vessels, and were already well in circulation on the European market by the early 1600s. A single Gujarat dish of very similar form in a private Portuguese collection is inscribed with the date 1568 in the centre (Jaffer 2002, p.119 n.102). The model is constructed of a thin wood carcase, probably teak, veneered with a mosaic of mother of pearl plaques on both sides secured with minute brass or silver pins and raised on a circular metal foot. The design of the central bowl typically resembles a flower, possibly a lotus, inspired by Hindu and Buddhist iconography and also Yuan and Ming dynasty porcelain dishes.

Other dishes of this type in public collections include one in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, and another in National Museum of Asian Art, Washington [figs.1, 2]. Two similar dishes are in a European private collection, illustrated in The Heritage of Rauluchantim, nos.13 and 14, and further examples have appeared at auction in the past fifteen years, among them Christie's London 16 July 2010, lot 201; Christie's Paris 17 November 2010, lot 158; Christie's London 2 December 2014, lot 72; and most recently Bonham's London, 7 June 2023, lot 36. The latter was reputedly a gift from Anne Boleyn, second wife of King Henry VIII, to Sir John Brereton, and illustrates the high esteem with which mother-of-pearl objects were already held in Tudor England, as Thomas Cromwell reportedly presented Henry VIII with a gold-mounted mother-of-pearl ewer as a New Year's gift in 1534, and in 1585 Queen Elizabeth I was said to have received a gold-mounted mother-of-pearl ewer and basin from Lord Burghley (Jaffer 2002, p.39).