A bidri hookah base, 
Bidar, Deccan, India, circa 1700, 
Of spherical form with slightly flared...

Bidriware is perhaps the most distinctive luxury good that was produced in the Deccan (M. Sardar and N. Haidar, Sultans of Deccan India, 1500-1700: Opulence and Fantasy, New York, 2015, p.179). It is formed of an alloy of 90% zinc cast with lead, copper and tin, into the surface of which a pattern is incised and silver, as here, or brass hammered in. The background is then covered in a paste of guarded formula including mud from the river Manjira and polished, giving the final object its distinctive black sheen.

The present example is a common early form but employs charming and very unusual decoration. The majority of the hookah base is given over to a water-effect ground populated with fish, peacocks, and divided by palm trees. Similar trees have a history of being used strongly in Deccani painting, appearing for example in an Aurangabad Ragamala painting from the late 16th century in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (M.90.141.2). The form of the trees relates our hookah base closely to a small group of other Bidri vessels, many of which have been attributed by Mark Zebrowski to a single workshop (Mark Zebrowski, Gold, Silver and Bronze from Mughal India, London, 1988, comment pp.229-232, nos.369-372, pp.228-8, col.pls.509 and 510). Two of these are hookah bases of similar form to the present, but with touches of brass inlay and the shorter mouth that Zebrowski regards as an indicator of the earliest dating, one is a drop-shaped hookah base and one a mango-shaped flask. He also publishes a bottle with similar decoration but without brass inlay that he dates to the early 18th century (op.cit., no.286 and col.pl.511). To this group can be added another spherical hookah base which was recently on the London market (Simon Ray, Islamic and Indian Works of Art, London, 2015, no.28, pp.66-69). Lacking brass inlay and with a different handling of the silver inlay, especially the amount of engraving of silver that took place after the inlay, it was attributed to a master of the generation immediately after the one discussed by Zebrowski. All these vessels have highly original landscape decoration, one including figures, all including animals or birds.

Five of the six vessels listed above decorate at least part of the lower sections of the design with water inhabited by fish, birds or both. The water is always indicated by inlaid wire patterns, either forming fish-scale designs or, as here, formed in concentric angled spirals and other patterns around the creatures. The slightly later flask also has a band that is extremely similar to our design around its neck, presumably to indicate that it was, as are the hookah bases, for water. Ours however makes much more use of engraved designs in the silver panels, similar but not as extensive as that found on the Simon Ray hookah base. Like that, and like the flask, it seems to be the work of a craftsman working in Bidar in the close aftermath of the master identified by Zebrowski, somebody who knew the master’s work extremely well, but who had his own inventiveness in design and composition. The enormous characterful variety of birds and fish to be found in the decoration here demonstrates clearly the wonderfully playful mind of our artist.