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Lot Essay
Though the Mughal and Rajput rulers of India remain famous for their palaces, these itinerant rulers often spent just as much time under canvas as they did at home. Naturally, their tents were elaborate affairs. In the Ain-i Akbari, Abu'l-Fazl writes that the Emperor Akbar travelled with an extensive network of tents and pavilions that together created an encampment over a hundred yards square (Blochmann (tr.), Ain-i-Akbari volume I, Calcutta, 1873, p.46). Later, the French traveller François de Bernier descibed how Aurangzeb's entourage would go ahead of him while on the march to erect enormous tents, the walls of which comprised of 'screens of seven or eight feet in height, which they secure by cords attached to pegs'. Like ours, these were printed with a design featuring 'a great vase of flowers' (John Irwin and Magaret Hall, Indian Painted and Printed Fabrics, Ahmedabad, 1971, p.22). A complete Mughal tent is preserved in the collection of the Mehrangarh Museum, Jodhpur, while a red-walled tent appears in a painting of Akbar hunting in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (acc.no.IS:2:55-1896).
The Mughal precedent of grand tents was taken up by their successors: Zirwat Chowdhury argues that Abhai Singh of Jodhpur deliberately emulated Mughal tents to make his own claim to power ("An Imperial Mughal Tent and mobile sovereignty in eighteenth-century Jodhpur", Art History, volume 38, issue 4, pp.668-81). Another tent is known to have been in the Jaipur royal storehouse in the 1980s, and was likely prepared for the royal family more than a century earlier: a large part of it is preserved in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (acc.no.1981.321). These Rajasthani tents had much in common with those of the Mughals - often red in colour, each panel of the wall would be decorated like a niche containing a vase of flowers. A tent which formerly belonged to Tipu Sultan is in Powis Castle, Wales (acc.no.1180731.1). Parts of the original lining of our tent panel are preserved with it, and have stamps indicating that it was formerly in the Jaipur Royal Collection, suggesting a similar royal function.
Several other panels from similar tents are known to exist. A large section, including two ceiling panels and a wall hanging very similar to ours, is spectacularly displayed in the Calico Museum, Ahmedabad (acc.no.3085, published Peter Alford Andrews, Tentage at the Calico Museum and its Patterns, Ahmedabad, 2015, pp.218-37). The catalogue reports that the tent originally came from Sikar, a city in Jaipur state, and give a range of possible dates between the 18th and early 20th centuries. The panels are so similar in design to ours that they may well come from the same tent. Smaller fragments which certainly came from the same original tent as ours, formerly in the collection of H. Peter Stern, were sold Sotheby's London, 10 June 2020, lots 150-3 and 156-7. A large tent canopy, likely from the Deccan, sold in these Rooms, 26 May 2016, lot 14. Other panels of the tent are reported to be in the Baroda Museum and in a collection in Japan ("Marketplace", HALI 204, p.123).
The Mughal precedent of grand tents was taken up by their successors: Zirwat Chowdhury argues that Abhai Singh of Jodhpur deliberately emulated Mughal tents to make his own claim to power ("An Imperial Mughal Tent and mobile sovereignty in eighteenth-century Jodhpur", Art History, volume 38, issue 4, pp.668-81). Another tent is known to have been in the Jaipur royal storehouse in the 1980s, and was likely prepared for the royal family more than a century earlier: a large part of it is preserved in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (acc.no.1981.321). These Rajasthani tents had much in common with those of the Mughals - often red in colour, each panel of the wall would be decorated like a niche containing a vase of flowers. A tent which formerly belonged to Tipu Sultan is in Powis Castle, Wales (acc.no.1180731.1). Parts of the original lining of our tent panel are preserved with it, and have stamps indicating that it was formerly in the Jaipur Royal Collection, suggesting a similar royal function.
Several other panels from similar tents are known to exist. A large section, including two ceiling panels and a wall hanging very similar to ours, is spectacularly displayed in the Calico Museum, Ahmedabad (acc.no.3085, published Peter Alford Andrews, Tentage at the Calico Museum and its Patterns, Ahmedabad, 2015, pp.218-37). The catalogue reports that the tent originally came from Sikar, a city in Jaipur state, and give a range of possible dates between the 18th and early 20th centuries. The panels are so similar in design to ours that they may well come from the same tent. Smaller fragments which certainly came from the same original tent as ours, formerly in the collection of H. Peter Stern, were sold Sotheby's London, 10 June 2020, lots 150-3 and 156-7. A large tent canopy, likely from the Deccan, sold in these Rooms, 26 May 2016, lot 14. Other panels of the tent are reported to be in the Baroda Museum and in a collection in Japan ("Marketplace", HALI 204, p.123).