Gujarat, India, circa 1600

The Ewers:

Viscount Kilcoursie, son of 7th Earl of Cavan;

thence by descent to his daughter, Lady Henrietta Harvey;

Thence by descent;

Sothebys London, 16 December 1958

The charger:

Sotheby’s London, 2 July 1997, lot 203

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Gujarat was a center for mother-of-pearl work, where artists created inlaid objects such as dishes, caskets, and furniture for the export market. The luxurious objects were listed in the inventories of royal collections throughout Europe, including those of the Green Vault in Dresden and the Royal Danish Kunstkammer, and it is even recorded that in Thomas Cromwell presented a mother-of-pearl ewer to King Henry VIII as a New Years present in 1534. Such items, like the present ewers and basin, would have served as prized additions to collections of exotic luxury goods, but few examples survive today due to the fragility of the material.

The majority of the extant pieces are in the collections of museums, including the Victoria & Albert Museum, London and Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, which has a similar plate in its collection (acc. number 2006.313). A set of three Gujarat objects sold together is particularly rare, due to the scarcity of the objects.