Enrica Medugno
Senior Sale Coordinator
Lot 182
A Canton enamelled-copper huqqa base for the Indian Market China, 18th Century
23 May 2023, 11:00 BST
London, New Bond StreetSold for £10,240 inc. premium
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Oliver White
Head of Department
A Canton enamelled-copper huqqa base for the Indian Market
China, 18th Century
China, 18th Century
of lobed globular form on a splayed foot, the flattened shoulder in the form of a flowerhead, the flaring neck with moulded ring, decorated in polychrome painted enamel with floral vines to the lobed panels, above and below foliate friezes, the neck with a floral vine and vegetal interlace
19 cm. high
19 cm. high
Footnotes
This rare huqqa base made in China for the Indian market imitates the form of bidri and brass huqqas from late 17th Century Deccan such as an example from a private collection published in Mark Zebrowski, Gold, Silver & Bronze from Mughal India, London 1997, p. 234, no. 390. For another Canton enamelled huqqa base dated to the same period see Simon Ray, Indian & Islamic Works of Art, London, 2002, pp. 76-77, no. 47. A rosewater sprinkler for the Indian Market with comparable decoration and also dated to the 18th Century is in the Hermitage Museum (see Chinese Export Art in the Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg 2003, p. 77, cat. 90). For a lobed spittoon, also possibly for the Indian market and dated to the late 18th Century, with extremely similar vegetal interlace to that on the neck of our huqqa, see Michael Gillingham, Chinese painted enamel, Oxford 1978, p. 42, no. 43.