- Title
- Mug with Hunting Scenes
- Date Made
- circa 1890
- Medium
- Silver, repoussé
- Dimensions
- 4 x 5 x 3 3/4 in. (10.16 x 12.7 x 9.53 cm)
- Accession Number
- M.2017.98
- Collecting Area
- South and Southeast Asian Art
- Curatorial Notes
The elegant baluster-shape mug is a tour de force of repoussé work with finely detailed chasing. Its primary imagery features scenes of animals hunting prey: a cheetah mauling an antelope buck, dogs attacking a boar, and a hyena overpowering a lamb or small ewe, as well as four birds pecking fruit and a running hare. All the figures are set within a lush field of Kutch’s idiosyncratic floral scroll. The top and bottom borders each consist principally of a series of acanthus leaves. The loop handle is embellished with scroll forms on the upper exterior and Mughal-style flowering plants on the lower exterior.
An extensive corpus of extraordinary silver objects was produced in Kutch (or Cutch, now called Kachchh) in Gujarat from the mid-19th through the early 20th century. The myriad works incorporated a broad spectrum of European and South Asian decorative art articles and weaponry. Regardless of their typological diversity, they are stylistically and technically unified by their sophisticated repoussé work, distinctive floral decoration and western Indian figural imagery, and a very high standard of purity (95–98 percent silver compared to the minimum standard of 92.5 percent required for sterling silver). The preeminent silversmith of Kutch was Oomersi Mawji, and his work and that of his sons is generally identifiable by a maker’s mark stamped on the bottom. Mawji was active from c. 1860 to 1890 in the capital city of Bhuj, where he was appointed the court silversmith to Maharao Shri Khengarji III (r. 1875–1942). Mawji’s sons continued his workshop into the 1930s. At the height of its popularity, Kutch silver was in great demand in both domestic and international markets. Its handmade beauty was esteemed by the English Arts and Crafts movement from 1860 to 1910.
- 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).