An Anglo Indian Vizagapatam ivory casket circa 1780

COMPARATIVE LITERATURE

Masterpieces of English Furniture, The Jon Gerstenfeld Collection, London, 1998, chapter 7, Amin Jaffer, `The Anglo-Indian Ivory Furniture', pp.128-147, and also Amin Jaffer, Furniture from British India and Ceylon,  2001, p 204 illustrates a similar example to the offered lot.

This box was produced in the town of Vizagapatam in the northern Circars, situated on the Coromandel coast of India between the cities of Calcutta and Madras. The site of an East India Company factory since 1668, it became the centre of a thriving furniture industry during the 18th century, many of the pieces, which included small tables, toilet mirrors, chairs, writing slopes and boxes like the present item, being designed in the European style. In 1801 Henrietta Clive, daughter of the celebrated Lord Clive, visited Vizagapatam and wrote to her father `We have seen the people inlaying the Ivory it appears very simple they draw the pattern...they intend with a pencil and then cut it out slightly with a small piece of Iron, they afterwards put hot Lac upon it, and when it is dry scrape it off and polish it, the Lac remained in the marks made with the piece of iron...'