Bridal casket
India, Gujarat, and Goa or Lisbon
Not on view
This bridal casket, veneered on all surfaces of the exterior with mother-of-pearl applied with silver pins in a tesserae technique, is a masterpiece of its genre. The small corpus of objects to which it belongs is associated with Gujarat in coastal western India and encompasses works that date from in the second half of the sixteenth into the early seventeenth century. While the decorative technique and aesthetic are Indian, the forms to which they are applied is European. Produced for Portuguese clients and primarily intended for use in Asia, upon return to Europe, such objects acquired significant value as marvels, made of exotic materials with dazzling artistry.
