INDIA, 18TH CENTURY

Ivory gunpowder horns from India and Iran are integrating animal forms illustrative of hunting scenes. Bird or fsh shaped primers are published in Allan and Gilmour, 2000, nos. A.28 and A.29, p.179. The recurring motif of a leaping antelope, a prize game for skilled hunter, lends itself to near perfection with its elegant and slender form to the powder horn. Several comparable pieces in ivory are known, some of which can be traced in European inventories to the seventeenth and early eighteenth century. A particularly elaborate example was in the collection of Prince Elector Johann Georg II of Saxony in 1658, while another in Denmark is noted in an inventory of 1737 (Skelton, Robert. The Indian Heritage: Court Life & Arts Under Mughal Rule: Victoria & Albert Museum, 21 April-22 August 1982. London, 1982, nos.439 and 440, p.135).