This intricately decorated glass hookah base is an early example of Indian reverse painting on glass from Lucknow. The use of the distinctive technique was likely inspired by European and East Asian reverse painting on glass, which flourished from the mid-18th to the early 19th century and would have circulated in the cosmopolitan milieu of the Lucknow court and society. The heyday of the technique’s use in South Asia was in the mid-19th through the early 20th century in southern India. The clear glass vessel is unadorned apart for two balancing areas of enameling and gilding that ring the exterior base and shoulder of the body respectively. The primary decoration, meant to be viewed from the inside, is an animated scene of antelopes, birds, swans, and a tiger seemingly cavorting around a forest pond (formed by the convex kick of the base). Disproportionately large lotus flowers growing out of rock formations are interspersed amidst the wildlife. The vignette’s groundline is formed by a decorative band of indeterminate foliage. A lotus scroll serves as the innermost border encircling the kick. The shoulder has a gilded band of interlocking triangular motifs and pendant acanthus leaves. The rim of the mouth is gilded. The delicate flora and fauna decoration relate closely to the perching birds on flowering branches and meandering ground lines that is a frequent pictorial convention found in the borders of contemporaneous album paintings from Lucknow.

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