Lot Essay
Objects decorated in this particular shade of blue enamel are rare. The blue enamelling on the stem is reminiscent of work from Multan, evoking the colour of ceramic tiling from tombs and mosques. A sword hilt and chape and the inner surface of a box lid, decorated in turquoise blue and red champlevé-enamelled technique, attributed to the Deccan or Mughal India and dated 17th century are in the Al-Sabah Collection, Kuwait National Museum (Manuel Keene, Treasury of the World, Jewelled Arts of India in the Age of the Mughals, London, 2001, p. 72-73, figs. 6.26 and 6.27). Two further comparable boxes, one champlevé-enamelled and the other enamelled and gem-set, dating from the second half of the 17th century, are in the Al Thani Collection (Amin Jaffer, From the Great Mughals to the Maharajas: Jewels from the Al-Thani Collection, Paris, 2017, p. 168, fig. 127 and 128).
Tobacco was introduced to India in the late sixteenth century by the Portuguese. It is thought to have arrived at the Mughal court in 1604, when Asad Beg, one of Akbar’s ministers, offered him a tobacco-filled pipe after his return from Bijapur in the Deccan. Although Akbar did not take to smoking tobacco, it soon became fashionable amongst his courtiers to do so. This practice is known to have carried on until it was forbidden by Jahangir in 1617. The earliest evidence of smoking in Mughal painting is in a miniature by the artist Mushkiq, dated circa 1607-08 which depicts a prince smoking a long-stemmed pipe with a globular bowl which is being filled by an attendant using tongs. The Mughal prince is probably smoking opium. The characteristic huqqa bowl, associated with tobacco, through which smoke could be drawn up with a long pipe and cooled with water, was noticed ten years later by Edward Terry, chaplain to Sir Thomas Roe, the English Ambassador to the Mughal court. (see Sotheby’s London, 19 October 1994, lot 151). In India, early huqqa types are usually depicted with a side exit for the pipe. There are illustrations of huqqa pipes dating from the 17th and early 18th century with long stems comparable to our example, published in M. Zebrowski, Gold, Silver and Bronze in Mughal India, London, 1997, pl. 363, 365, p. 226. A long flexible pipe would have been attached to the curved section of our huqqa stem. For an early eighteenth century comparable example illustrated in a Mewar painting, and further discussion on huqqa pipes by Henrietta Sharp Cockrell, see Pedro Moura Carvalho, Gems and Jewels of Mughal India, The Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art, Volume XVIII, London, 2010, pp.148-151.
Tobacco was introduced to India in the late sixteenth century by the Portuguese. It is thought to have arrived at the Mughal court in 1604, when Asad Beg, one of Akbar’s ministers, offered him a tobacco-filled pipe after his return from Bijapur in the Deccan. Although Akbar did not take to smoking tobacco, it soon became fashionable amongst his courtiers to do so. This practice is known to have carried on until it was forbidden by Jahangir in 1617. The earliest evidence of smoking in Mughal painting is in a miniature by the artist Mushkiq, dated circa 1607-08 which depicts a prince smoking a long-stemmed pipe with a globular bowl which is being filled by an attendant using tongs. The Mughal prince is probably smoking opium. The characteristic huqqa bowl, associated with tobacco, through which smoke could be drawn up with a long pipe and cooled with water, was noticed ten years later by Edward Terry, chaplain to Sir Thomas Roe, the English Ambassador to the Mughal court. (see Sotheby’s London, 19 October 1994, lot 151). In India, early huqqa types are usually depicted with a side exit for the pipe. There are illustrations of huqqa pipes dating from the 17th and early 18th century with long stems comparable to our example, published in M. Zebrowski, Gold, Silver and Bronze in Mughal India, London, 1997, pl. 363, 365, p. 226. A long flexible pipe would have been attached to the curved section of our huqqa stem. For an early eighteenth century comparable example illustrated in a Mewar painting, and further discussion on huqqa pipes by Henrietta Sharp Cockrell, see Pedro Moura Carvalho, Gems and Jewels of Mughal India, The Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art, Volume XVIII, London, 2010, pp.148-151.