- Title
- Beaker
- Date Made
- circa 1872
- Medium
- Parcel-gilt silver, repoussé and chased
- Dimensions
- Height: 4 1/2 in. (11.43 cm)
Diameter: 3 1/2 in. (8.89 cm)
- Accession Number
- M.2013.220.4
- Collecting Area
- South and Southeast Asian Art
- Curatorial Notes
This elegant beaker is a subtle masterpiece of sophisticated design. It features six horizontal registers burgeoning with meandering grapevines with grape bunches, curled tendrils, and serrated leaves with five lobes. Rows of palmettes or anthemions are used as border motifs. At the mid-point of the waist, the bands of decoration abut and invert into mirrored grapevines and palmettes growing in the opposite direction.
The grapevine-and-bunches pattern is generally regarded as one of the earliest decorative motifs used to adorn Lucknow silver. Examples survive from at least the early 1870s to circa 1880. Variant styles of Lucknow’s grape pattern existed. Figural modes with forest animals and birds were popular. The non-figural genre, such as represented here, was a complex matrix of swirling vines and foliage. The grapevine-and-bunches motif is also occasionally found in Deccani metalware, but rarely appears in Mughal art and architecture. It may have been introduced into South Asia during this period from earlier Ottoman and Chinese ceramic wares adorned with grape bunches that are known to have been traded in India and acquired by certain royal treasuries.
An inscription incised on the bottom reads: India 1872 | Robin Baring | from Cousin Nina | Countess of Northbrook | April 1939.