Enrica Medugno
Senior Sale Coordinator
Lot 162
An impressive gilt-silver huqqa Lucknow, India, 19th Century
22 May 2025, 11:00 BST
London, New Bond Street£8,000 - £12,000
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Oliver White
Head of Department
An impressive gilt-silver huqqa
Lucknow, India, 19th Century
Lucknow, India, 19th Century
comprising a bell-shaped base sitting on a stepped domed stand on eight feet in the form of birds in flight, with fabric, thread and metal-thread wrapped pipe terminating in a silver-gilt mouthpiece, the burner with bulbous pierced openwork cover with addorsing peacocks and surmounted by a domed lid with peacock finial, with hanging chains terminating in addorsing fish ornaments, variously moulded and engraved with raised bosses and bands of scrolling grape vines and acanthus leaves, and floral motifs
94 cm. high; 4600 g.
94 cm. high; 4600 g.
Footnotes
The twin fish motif represented in the hanging ornaments of the present lot is a prominent and iconic symbol of Lucknow. It was part of the royal emblem of the Oudh (Awadh) royal family that ruled over Lucknow, and was used on royal standards as well as throughout the architecture of the city, as documented in a photograph of the 'Fish Gate at Lucknow' by Samuel Bourne, now in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, (Accession No. PGP R 1024.50). Furthermore, the Nawab even had a floating boat-like vessel shaped as a fish (see a photograph by Felice Beato and Henry Hering, 'Chutter Manzil Palace, with the King's Boat in the Shape of a Fish on the Gomti River', 1858–1862, in the Getty Museum, Los Angeles (Accession No. 84.XO.421.24)).
A huqqa base and burner with very similar decoration, attributed to Lucknow or Calcutta, is in the Nasser D. Khalili Collection (see Michael Spink, Brasses, Bronze and Silver of the Islamic Lands, Part III, London, 2022, pp. 1098-99, No. 718). For an enamelled silver huqqa from Lucknow with comparable openwork elements and peacock finial sold at Sotheby's, see Arts of the Islamic World & India including Fine Rugs and Carpets, 31 March 2021, lot 98.