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Lot 86

A bidri hookah base
Hyderbad, early 19th century

17 March 2014, 13:00 EDT
New York

Sold for US$3,750 inc. premium

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A bidri hookah base

Hyderbad, early 19th century
The spherical zinc alloy body decorated in silver inlay with spaced vertical bands with floral sprays of five-petaled star-like blossoms framed between double lines, also repeated around the neck and collar, the shoulder and foot with thinner horizontal bands of alternating petal and leaf motif.
6 1/2 in. (16.3 cm) high

Footnotes

The present lot's ornamentation is similar to that of pieces in Indian Museums attributed to early 19th century Hyderabad. Compare, for instance, the five-petaled flowers appearing on a candle-stand in the National Museum, New Delhi (62.798, see Lal, Bidri Ware, New Delhi, 1990, no. 163, p. 132) and the narrower bands of alternating petal and leaf motifs wrapping around the foot and shoulder of a bell-shaped hookah base dated to 1818 in the Jagdish & Kamla Mittal Museum of Indian Art (76.1265. ME.44, see Mittal, Bidri Ware and Damascene Work, Hyderabad, 2011, no. 44, pp. 138-9).

Provenance:
Private Californian Collection
Acquired from LaPorts Auction, California in 1980-5

Additional information

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