Lot Essay
The Persian inscription under the foot gives the weight as 93 tolas and 10 masas.
The construction of this remarkable flask shows a mastery of various techniques. The body has a silver lining; a careful look inside it reveals soldered joins between sheets of silver. The indications are that the jade panels were fixed onto the silver body before the emerald-inset ribs, either using a ridge along the side of each, or alternatively using pins which would then have been covered by the inset stones. Unfortunately it is not possibe to see clearly enough within the body to ascertain which is the case. The ribs were then added and the stones then inlaid. It appears that the body and neck were made in completely separate parts which were then joined.
In terms of the decoration the flask shows remarkable versatility. The gold surrounds to the rounded inset rubies form floral designs with the ruby at the centre. Many of these, particularly the smaller ones, are shaped to convey a sense of movement to the design, particularly on the body. These are then contrasted with the far tighter denser-set emeralds which are flat-cut as opposed to the rounded rubies. This adds to the sense of counterpoint found throughout the flask. The stones around the mouth have the same features, although here they are set completely below the level of the lip to ensure that the lid will sit snugly. Not only are the stones used cleverly, they are also remarkably uniform in colour.
In the 1982 publication of this flask Robert Skelton commented that it was unusual in two aspects of its craftsmanship. The construction of the globular body was noted as surprising "in view of the fact that the technique of hollowing out an interior of this type had been thoroughly mastered by Indian carvers". Two factors may well have been the reason for this. The first is given in the caption to another item in the same exhibition, an inscribed jade pendant with inscription dated to the reign of Jahangir (no.353, pp.118-9). Here the caption notes that "jade was a rare and highly-valued commodity in India, and jade objects would have been owned only by a small number of people at the highest level of society". The present arrangement would have ensured that this rare commodity went further than carving it all in the round from one block, particularly if the evenness of colour was all-important, as here. The other point is that the fixing of ribs of emeralds which are well proud of the surface onto a solid jade body would have been extremely difficult without drilling the jade, in which case potentially creating a point of weakness for the flask. On both counts therefore the present arrangement is more advantageous.
The other point was that "the gems are mainly set by the claw principle - discreetly in most cases, but very conspicuously in the case of the finial to the lid and inside the neck". This indicates clearly the influence of European wares at the Mughal court at the time. This influence has long been observed and discussed in the field of painting, but in the arts of jewellery and goldsmithing has only relatively recently been examined in any detail.
Manual Keene, working on the extensive collection of inset hardstone vessels in the al-Sabah collection, has noted that the settings, even when they appear, as here, to include elements of claw settings, are constructed using the traditional Indian kundan technique of making the settings from gold which has been "beaten into narrow strips of foil and refined to the point at which it becomes 'tacky' at room temperature. At this degree of purity, it can actually form a molecular bond when pressure is applied to it by means of steel tools, which are first used to press the foil down around the stones, then to cut, shape and burnish it into any form that the artist may wish" (Keene, Manuel, and Kaoukji, Salam: Treasury of the World, London, 2001, p.18). The very obvious surrounds to all the inset gemstones are therefore almost certainly created in exactly this fashion, using a native Indian technique to recreate an imported European style.
The al-Sabah collection provides the best comparable examples of inlaid and gem-set hardstone vessels in terms of technique. A crystal spherical box has a silver lining and the surface covered with a lattice linking rubies and emeralds set into cusped gold surrounds. The feeling of that example, to use a very European term, is however more "gothick", the cusping and claws being more obvious than are found here, and the sense of movement by contrast less noticeable (Treasury of the World, no.2.11, p.35). A similar bowl and a dagger hilt also have inset lattice designs, but again with a more "gothick" feel (nos. 2.7 and 2.8, p.33). A number of vessels have work around the inset stones which has similar features to that which is found here, but none appear to use it as such a prominent feature as here.
The form of the flask, as has already been seen, is one which has two direct parallels in the group of jewelled objects sent to the Russian Court by Nader Shah after his looting of the Imperial Mughal Treasury in Delhi. The two in Russia and the present example are the only ones of this form to have survived from the 17th century Mughal Court.
That they were to be used for wine is clear from a number of sources. There are numerous textual references to the use of wine at the Mughal Court. Many miniatures show bottles and flasks, normally of gold or gold-coloured metal surrounded by small cups for wine. There is a clear difference between the shape of the necks of these and those of scent or rosewater sprinklers which are also depicted in miniatures. A particularly good example of the latter with the tall narrow neck with a flaring rosette mouth is seen in the margin of a leaf which has been attributed to Govardhan now in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Pal, Pratapaditya: Indian Painting, Los Angeles, 1993, no.55, pp.219-223). Indian wine flasks in contrast have flaring necks; the image on the facing page leaves no doubt at all about the use of such flasks. The use is further indicated by the small pierced aperture at the base of the neck which was probably intended to keep insects away from the contents.
The construction of this remarkable flask shows a mastery of various techniques. The body has a silver lining; a careful look inside it reveals soldered joins between sheets of silver. The indications are that the jade panels were fixed onto the silver body before the emerald-inset ribs, either using a ridge along the side of each, or alternatively using pins which would then have been covered by the inset stones. Unfortunately it is not possibe to see clearly enough within the body to ascertain which is the case. The ribs were then added and the stones then inlaid. It appears that the body and neck were made in completely separate parts which were then joined.
In terms of the decoration the flask shows remarkable versatility. The gold surrounds to the rounded inset rubies form floral designs with the ruby at the centre. Many of these, particularly the smaller ones, are shaped to convey a sense of movement to the design, particularly on the body. These are then contrasted with the far tighter denser-set emeralds which are flat-cut as opposed to the rounded rubies. This adds to the sense of counterpoint found throughout the flask. The stones around the mouth have the same features, although here they are set completely below the level of the lip to ensure that the lid will sit snugly. Not only are the stones used cleverly, they are also remarkably uniform in colour.
In the 1982 publication of this flask Robert Skelton commented that it was unusual in two aspects of its craftsmanship. The construction of the globular body was noted as surprising "in view of the fact that the technique of hollowing out an interior of this type had been thoroughly mastered by Indian carvers". Two factors may well have been the reason for this. The first is given in the caption to another item in the same exhibition, an inscribed jade pendant with inscription dated to the reign of Jahangir (no.353, pp.118-9). Here the caption notes that "jade was a rare and highly-valued commodity in India, and jade objects would have been owned only by a small number of people at the highest level of society". The present arrangement would have ensured that this rare commodity went further than carving it all in the round from one block, particularly if the evenness of colour was all-important, as here. The other point is that the fixing of ribs of emeralds which are well proud of the surface onto a solid jade body would have been extremely difficult without drilling the jade, in which case potentially creating a point of weakness for the flask. On both counts therefore the present arrangement is more advantageous.
The other point was that "the gems are mainly set by the claw principle - discreetly in most cases, but very conspicuously in the case of the finial to the lid and inside the neck". This indicates clearly the influence of European wares at the Mughal court at the time. This influence has long been observed and discussed in the field of painting, but in the arts of jewellery and goldsmithing has only relatively recently been examined in any detail.
Manual Keene, working on the extensive collection of inset hardstone vessels in the al-Sabah collection, has noted that the settings, even when they appear, as here, to include elements of claw settings, are constructed using the traditional Indian kundan technique of making the settings from gold which has been "beaten into narrow strips of foil and refined to the point at which it becomes 'tacky' at room temperature. At this degree of purity, it can actually form a molecular bond when pressure is applied to it by means of steel tools, which are first used to press the foil down around the stones, then to cut, shape and burnish it into any form that the artist may wish" (Keene, Manuel, and Kaoukji, Salam: Treasury of the World, London, 2001, p.18). The very obvious surrounds to all the inset gemstones are therefore almost certainly created in exactly this fashion, using a native Indian technique to recreate an imported European style.
The al-Sabah collection provides the best comparable examples of inlaid and gem-set hardstone vessels in terms of technique. A crystal spherical box has a silver lining and the surface covered with a lattice linking rubies and emeralds set into cusped gold surrounds. The feeling of that example, to use a very European term, is however more "gothick", the cusping and claws being more obvious than are found here, and the sense of movement by contrast less noticeable (Treasury of the World, no.2.11, p.35). A similar bowl and a dagger hilt also have inset lattice designs, but again with a more "gothick" feel (nos. 2.7 and 2.8, p.33). A number of vessels have work around the inset stones which has similar features to that which is found here, but none appear to use it as such a prominent feature as here.
The form of the flask, as has already been seen, is one which has two direct parallels in the group of jewelled objects sent to the Russian Court by Nader Shah after his looting of the Imperial Mughal Treasury in Delhi. The two in Russia and the present example are the only ones of this form to have survived from the 17th century Mughal Court.
That they were to be used for wine is clear from a number of sources. There are numerous textual references to the use of wine at the Mughal Court. Many miniatures show bottles and flasks, normally of gold or gold-coloured metal surrounded by small cups for wine. There is a clear difference between the shape of the necks of these and those of scent or rosewater sprinklers which are also depicted in miniatures. A particularly good example of the latter with the tall narrow neck with a flaring rosette mouth is seen in the margin of a leaf which has been attributed to Govardhan now in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Pal, Pratapaditya: Indian Painting, Los Angeles, 1993, no.55, pp.219-223). Indian wine flasks in contrast have flaring necks; the image on the facing page leaves no doubt at all about the use of such flasks. The use is further indicated by the small pierced aperture at the base of the neck which was probably intended to keep insects away from the contents.