CIRCA 1880, MAINPURI AND HOSHIARPUR

The present tables and the following lot were inspired by examples imported into India from Cairo, which in turn derived from 16th Century Ottoman models. Islamic interiors were an ever more popular part of international design exhibitions in the second half of the 19th Century, and these tables feature Islamic inspired geometric foliate pattern motifs. Mainpuri, a district in the Agra Division of the United Provinces, was the centre for such brass-inlaid furniture (A. Jaffer, Furniture from British India and Ceylon, pp. 305-307). The thin wire inlay of the table on the left can be definitively attributed to Mainpuri, whilst that on the right is from one of the Hoshiarpur workshops.