MUGHAL INDIA, CIRCA 1750-65

Terminating with a delicately-carved hand, this staff and others like it appear in paintings of the Mughal period or later. A portrait of a standing woman in the Philadelphia Museum of art, for example, depicts her holding just such an implement (1996-120-18a,b). A similar object is also shown in a nineteenth century Kota painting in the British Museum, where a young woman undergoing an initiation ceremony is handed one by an elderly yogi (1999,1202,0.3.3). Though they are often catalogued as backscratchers, in no contemporary images do we see them being used as such. Moreover, the size and weight of surviving examples suggests that they may have had a different function. Whilst the appearance in the British Museum painting may suggest some ritual significance, in her catalogue note on an example in the al-Sabah collection Kaoukji suggests that they may have been staffs of office (S. Kaoukji, Precious Indian Weapons and other Princely Accoutrements, London, 2018, p. 471, cat no. 175).

The finely-sculpted hand finial is complete with carefully observed palm lines and rings studded with precious stones. A similar nephrite hand finial can be seen on an example with an ivory shaft sold by Sotheby’s, 5 October 2011, lot 285. For another example with an all-jade shaft, one must look in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (acc. no. 02588IS). This example is distinguished by the delicate custard-apple finial at the base, which echoes those found on seventeenth-century jade dagger hilts and vessels. It appears in the 1775 Powis Castle inventory as ‘a Stick and Hand of Agate (the hand broke off).’ The Clive inventories often mistake jade for agate, and the repaired joint on our example indicates that this is, indeed, the same one (Susan Stronge, Bejewelled Treasures: The Al-Thani Collection, London, 2015, p. 83, cat no. 38).