Inlaid Box for the Portuguese Market

Box with Drawer

To create the lively decoration on this box, ivory was cut into very thin strips and shaped into tiny flowers and leaves—some stained with color—then inlaid into ebony veneer. The top and sides depict Portuguese hunters riding elephants and horses in a forest setting, and the borders are filled with scrolls, roundels, and stylized bird and animal heads. Such hunting scenes were adapted from Indo-Persian painting to decorate exported furniture, where they depicted European patrons in a princely Indian manner. In this example, the exuberant treatment of foliage, with repeating scrolling vines springing from tree branches and flowers, imbues the decorative scheme with a particular lyricism. The fact that the geometric frieze along the bottom edge is inlaid in lac rather than wood is somewhat unusual and suggests a time of manufacture when craftsmen were shifting from the older technique of lac inlay, for the Ottoman and Persian markets, to hardwood inlay, for the European consumer. During the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century, such inlaid hardwood items were produced for the Portuguese market, possibly in Gujarat and Sind, and exported from Goa and other coastal towns in western India.

This box can be associated with a group of ivory-inlaid hardwood boxes and furniture that may have been made in the same workshop, the most notable examples of which are a small cabinet in the Cincinnati Museum of Art[1] and another in the Kuwait National Museum, Kuwait City,[2] that bear similar hunting scenes featuring Indian and European figures in a forest. The upper portion of a cabinet in the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon,[3] exhibits an iconographic program similar to that of the Metropolitan’s box, although the Lisbon cabinet’s overall iconography is more complex. An altar converted to a tabletop in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London,[4] has almost identical zoomorphic S-shaped motifs in the border pattern. In general, this group of related works reveals consistent decorative principles and details.

The long drawer and relatively simple form of the box are rare, however, and suggest that it may have held writing implements (as an abbreviated form of the larger, more elaborate writing cabinets that are known) or valuable trinkets and personal possessions. Comparable boxes may have been used in the Mughal court as containers for precious objects, but inlaid boxes of this type usually rank among the portable trappings of wealthy European travelers. This particular form of long box with a drawer at one end is found in lac inlaid with mother-of-pearl but not, with the exception of this work, in ivory-inlaid wood.[5]

Navina Haidar in [Ekhtiar, Soucek, Canby, and Haidar 2011]

Footnotes:

1. Pride of the Princes: Indian Art of the Mughal Era in the Cincinnati Art Museum. Exhibition, Cincinnati Art Museum. Catalogue by Ellen S. Smart, Daniel S. Walker and others. Cincinnati, 1985, p. 81, no. 58.

2. Jenkins, Marilyn, ed. Islamic Art in the Kuwait National Museum: The al-Sabah Collection. London, 1983, p. 123.

3. Via Orientalis. Exhibition, Galerie de la CGER, Brussels. Catalogue by Ezio Bassani and others. Brussels, 1991, p. 145.

4. Goa and the Great Mughal. Exhibition, Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon. Catalogue by Nuno Vassallo e Silva and Jorges Flores. London, 2004, p. 115, no. 84.S; also in Jaffer, Amin. Luxury Goods from India: The Art of the Indian Cabinet Maker. London, 2002, pp. 34–35.

5. Digby, Simon.“The Mother-of-Pearl Overlaid Furniture of Gujarat: The Holdings of the Victoria and Albert Museum.” In Facets of Indian Art: A Symposium Held at the Victoria and Albert Museum on 26, 27, 28 April and 1 May 1982, edited by Robert Skelton et al., London, 1986, p. 221, fig. 12, shows a late sixteenth-century mother-of-pearl box with a scene of very similar composition; The Indian Heritage: Court Life and Arts under Mughal Rule. Exhibition, Victoria and Albert Museum, London. [Catalogue by Robert Skelton.] London,
1982, p. 162, no. 549.


Box with Hunting Scenes


Fine pieces of ivory inlaid furniture such as this box represented an active market in luxury goods, made in part for a growing European presence in the subcontinent as well as for export to Europe, from the late sixteenth century onward. Such works were largely decorated with European or Indian figures, often engaged in hunting scenes, as in this example, where the forest setting is enlivened by the lyrically curving branches of the trees.

While many Europeanizing elements are evident in the decoration of this box, the idiom is essentially a Mughal one. Such hunting scenes find their ultimate inspiration in Persian compositions, which in turn became popular in Mughal painting. The types of furniture created ranged from large standing cabinets and tables to more portable fall-front cabinets and small boxes. Although several centers have been proposed for the production of this type of furniture, including Sindh and the Deccan, Ahmedabad in Gujarat appears to have been a leader amongst them, as it had also been a notable area for the earlier production of inlay-in-lac furniture made for the Islamic Turkish and other export markets.[1]

This box can be related to a distinguished group of ivory inlaid furniture, possibly from the same workshop, which includes a cabinet in the Museu de Arte Antiga, Lisbon,[2] a "communion" table top in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London,[3] as well as two cabinets depicting hunting scenes in the Kuwait National Museum[4] and the Cincinatti Art Museum.[5] The distinguished S-shaped zoomorphized motifs along the edges are also seen in the V&A table and may derive from earlier Islamic precedents in metalwork, resembling Safavid dragon-headed hooks[6] and also Seljuk belt bucles. Its shape, long and narrow with a sliding drawer at one end (whose original interior has been replaced with European-style dovetail joints and screws, but exterior panel preserved), is unusual but can be related to an earlier calligraphic drawer-box in the inlay-in-lac technique at the Los Angeles County Museum[7] While the Los Angeles box has been identified as a penbox by the Persian verses on its panels, the function of this box is less clear, though it may very well have originally had a drawer with compartments for smaller objects.

Navina Haidar in [Topsfield 2004]

Footnotes:

1. Digby, Simon. “The Mother-of-Pearl Overlaid Furniture of Gujarat: An Indian Handicraft of the 16th and 17th Centuries.” In Facets of Indian Art: Robert Skelton et al. eds, London, 1986, pp. 213–23.

2. Via Orientalis. Exhibition, Galerie de la CGER, Brussels. Catalogue by Ezio Bassani and others. Brussels, 1991, p. 145.

3. Jaffer, Amin. Luxury Goods from India: The Art of the Indian Cabinet Maker. London, 2002, pp. 34–35, no. 9.

4. Jenkins, Marilyn, ed. Islamic Art in the Kuwait National Museum: The al-Sabah Collection. London, 1983, p. 123.

5. Pride of the Princes: Indian Art of the Mughal Era in the Cincinnati Art Museum. Exhibition, Cincinnati Art Museum. Catalogue by Ellen S. Smart, Daniel S. Walker and others. Cincinnati, 1985, p. 81, no. 58.

6. Taylor, M. B. and C. Jail, eds. L'etrange et le merveilleux en terres d'Islam, Paris, 2001, p. 111, no. 76.

7. Victoria and Albert Museum, The Indian Heritage, London, 1982, no. 549.

Private collection, Lisbon; [ Manuel Castilho Antiques, London, by 1999–2000; sold to MMA]

New York. Asia Society. "In the Realm of Gods and Kings: Arts of India, Selections from the Polsky Collections and The Metropolitan Museum of Art," September 14, 2004–January 2, 2005, no. 125.

Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin vol. 59 (2000–2001). p. 15, ill. (color).

Topsfield, Andrew, ed. "Arts of India." In In the Realm of Gods and Kings. London; New York: Philip Wilson Publishers, 2004. no. 125, pp. 286–87, ill. p. 287 (color).

Ekhtiar, Maryam, Priscilla P. Soucek, Sheila R. Canby, and Navina Haidar, ed. Masterpieces from the Department of Islamic Art in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1st ed. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2011. no. 267, pp. 341, 378–79, ill. p. 378 (color).

Stronge, Susan. The Great Mughals Art, Architecture and Opulance. London: V&A Publications, 2024. p. 70, ill. figs. 41a & b.