This hookah base is an exceptionally dynamic example of bidri-ware featuring extensive silver sheet and silver wire inlay. Made in what is called an inkpot-shaped base, its complex form features a compressed globular upper reservoir, unadorned narrow waist, and a splayed circular bottom supported by three short feet. The idiosyncratic vessel form may have been inspired by contemporaneous English inkpots made in the shape of a ship’s capstan or revolving waisted cylinder used to wind rope. The spout for inserting a now-missing inhalation tube has a loop handle attached to it and the vessel neck. Another tube for the combustion bowl would have originally extended vertically from the vessel mouth. The hookah base’s decorative program consists principally of two lush registers of grapevine-and-bunches that scroll around the reservoir and the tapered bottom. The grape vine is realistically depicted with curled tendrils and serrated leaves with typically five lobes, or sometimes three depending upon design dictates. A flowering scroll around the neck and repetitive border patterns in the form of diamonds, squares, lappets, chevrons, or upright acanthus leaves completes the vessel’s ornamentation. The grapevine-and-bunches motif appears sporadically on Deccani bidri-ware works and rarely in Mughal art. The motif may have been assimilated from 16th-century Ottoman ceramic wares and earlier Chinese Yuan and Ming ceramics, both of which are known to have been collected in India.