NORTH INDIA, 19TH CENTURY

Buckles strikingly similar to the present lot have been sold by Bonhams, 19 April 2016, lot 295, and in these Rooms, 6 October 1999, lot 210. Though both of these were attributed to North India in the 19th century, the design seems to have found its origins further south. A similar example with a different reverse enamelling is in the National Museum in New Delhi, where it is described as Deccani and attributed to the 18th century (published Rita Devi Sharma and Muthusamy Varadarajan, Handcrafted Indian Enamel Jewellery, New Delhi, 2008, p. 74). Much like this design, the technique of enamelling itself is likely to have arrived in India from the south: Susan Stronge suggests that it was first introduced to the subcontinent by European merchants in Goa (Susan Stronge, 'Gold and Silver in the 16th and 17th Century in Mughal India', in Nuno Vasallo e Silva and Jorge Flores (eds.), Goa and the Great Mughal, New York, 1996, p.70).