An enamelled gilt-silver dish
North India, probably Lucknow, circa 1750-80
of shallow form with curved sides and everted rim, decorated in yellow, blue and green enamel with a central roundel containing a rosette surrounded by an interlace of floral and foliate motifs, the sides with a band of trefoil motifs alternately surmounted by paired split-palmettes, the base with three engraved inscriptions
16.8 cm. diam. max.; 258 g.
Footnotes:
Provenance
Private UK collection.

Inscriptions: Mir Muzaffar Husayn Khan Sahib and Rahim al-Nisa Begum Sahiba, tola 21

Mughal enamelled courtly objects from the 17th and 18th century are rare. The enamelled decoration of a central stylized flower and flowering plants on the base of a huqqa base in the Clive Collection at Powis Castle (inv. no. NFS 900) have similarities in colour and composition to the flowers in the well of our dish. It is likely that the Clive Huqqa was produced in Lucknow, and is known to have been acquired by 1766. Similarities in the decoration of the present lot can also be drawn with an enamelled pandan and huqqa base both dated to the early 18th Century and illustrated in Mark Zebrowski, Gold, Silver & Bronze from Mughal India, London, 1997, pp. 92-93, nos. 85 and 86.

Rahim al-Nisa Begum (b.1842) was the mother of Mir Muzaffa Husayn Khan (b.1866), the Nawwab of Surat in Gujarat. A tola or tolaka is an Indian weight, equivalent to a suvarna.