PROBABLY LUCKNOW, MUGHAL NORTH INDIA, 1750-1765

Having encountered tobacco smoking in their American colonies, it was the Portuguese who first brought the habit to India in the final years of the sixteenth century. Though many took to it with enthusiasm, particularly ascetics who may have found in its effects some spiritual benefits, the habit had always been received ambivalently by the Mughal emperors: Jahangir forbade tobacco smoking outright in 1617 (H.S. Cockrell, 'Water Pipes' in P.M. Carvalho, Gems and Jewels of Mughal India, Oxford, 2010, p. 149). Beyond the imperial court the ban seems to have been widely disregarded, and the growing number of tobacco smokers in Iran or India seems to have been encouraged by the development of the hookah pipe, which blended water vapour with the tobacco smoke to soften the taste. Paintings from seventeenth- and eighteenth-century India show that women were just as enthusiastic in their use of hookah pipes as men. As Mughal power faded, the hookah became a symbol of royal repose and grace: many early European visitors to Indian courts were incredulous to find their hosts receiving them with a ‘hoake’ close to hand.

The striking palette of this hookah set – which combines forest green and electric blue field pigments – signals that this is likely to be the product of a Lucknow workshop. Like Bengal, Awadh experienced a short-lived period of de facto independence in the early eighteenth century under the ruler of a series of ambitious nawabs. Safdar Jang (r. 1739-54) particularly encouraged the development of courtly arts, with his atelier drawing inspiration from the products of the Mughal workshop, of which the nawab became supervisor in 1752. Though the gem-studded design is unusual in its luxuriousness, the underside of the base closely resembles other early eighteenth-century Lucknow enamels, like the betel box in the Victoria and Albert Museum (IM.30-1912, published S. Markel, 'The Luxury Arts of Lucknow', in S. Markel and T.B. Gude, India's Fabled City: The Arts of Courly Lucknow, Los Angeles, 2010, p. 200, no. 87). The nawabs of Awadh managed to preserve their power for longer than those in Bengal, staving off direct British rule until 1856.

This hookah set finds its sister piece in another hookah set from Powis castle. In 1766 the inventory recorded ‘4 hookahs, one set with Topazes and Rubies’; in 1774 this group was described in more detail to include ‘a D° [hookah] consisting of 4 Pieces, the bottom flat set w^h Diamonds & Rubies 2 of the Pieces set w^t Rubies and the top pieces Enamel’d red and Blue’. Another Hookah pipe from the collection was sold in these rooms, 27 April 2004, lot 160 and is now on loan to the Victoria and Albert Museum from the Museum of Islamic Art, Doha. The large number of gems on the exterior and thick gilding on the interior are unusually luxurious, leading Susan Stronge to remark that ‘few collections, public or private, can boast hookahs of comparable magnificence’ ('Gold and Silver', in Archer, Rowell and Skelton, Treasures from India: The Clive Collection at Powis Castle, London, 1987, p.76, cat nos. 90 and 91).