- Title
- Water Vessel (surahi)
- Date Made
- circa 1890
- Medium
- Glazed ceramic
- Dimensions
- Height: 8 3/8 in. (21.27 cm); Diameter: 5 3/4 in. (14.61 cm)
- Accession Number
- M.2002.7.2
- Collecting Area
- South and Southeast Asian Art
- Curatorial Notes
This surahi (water or wine vessel) features the traditional form of a compressed spherical body supported by a circular foot and a tall, slightly flaring neck with a low collar. Glazes in several colors are used: reddish-brown for the background, and white, light blue, medium blue, and dark blue for the vessel’s primary decoration of a flowering scroll encircling the body. Laplets embellish the shoulders and foot. The neck is graced with serrated leaves in pointed arches.
The vessel is attributed to c. 1890 from the Bombay School of Art (established in 1857 as the Sir Jamsetji Jeejibhoy School of Art). Paintings and ceramics were produced by students working under the supervision of indigenous master artists and European administrators to promote Indian arts and crafts. Pottery was produced from the mid-1870s until the early 20th century. Early examples were inspired by Sindh decorative styles, but important additional models were scenes from the renowned murals of the 5th-century Ajanta caves-temples discovered by English East India Company soldiers in 1819 near Aurangabad. Here, however, the prevailing artistic sources for this vessel’s floral decoration may have been the renowned Kutch flowering scroll featured prominently but in a smaller scale on contemporaneous silver works from Kutch, Gujarat.
- Selected Bibliography
- Markel, Stephen. Mughal and Early Modern Metalware from South Asia at LACMA: An Online Scholarly Catalogue. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2020. https://archive.org/details/mughal-metalware (accessed September 7, 2021).
