An enamelled gilt bowl and cover, Lucknow, India, circa 1800

of circular form with stepped base and domed cover surmounted by a bud finial, decorated with blue and green enamels on a gilt ground, the base with a minor palmette band below major band of scrolling lotus tendrils in reserve, the cover with foliate reserved cartouches enclosing alternating flower filled vases and flowering plants against a gilt ground decorated with floral stems, the shoulder and neck with further major and minor bands of floral and foliate motifs

Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton, first Earl of Lytton (1831-1891), Viceroy of India (1876-1880)

Knebworth House, Hertfordshire

Accompanied by two letters from Pamela, Countess of Lytton, dated 22 April and 29 November 1948

The use of blue and green enamels are typical of production in Lucknow. There appear to have been two different groups of enamelled wares using this colouration. The first group is worked with very finely engraved foliate designs enamelled against a plain silver or silver-gilt ground (Zebrowski 1997, pl.72-74, pp.86-87). The second group of which the current lot is an example uses a higher proportion of enamelling to silver-gilt ground with the use of larger floral forms.

The form of this piece relates to late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century silver-gilt pan-boxes from Lucknow (see Terlinden 1987, p.139, no.189 and p.145, no.212 ) their domed shape echoing Lucknow architecture of the same period.