A Northern India Mughal Small Carved Ivory Casket

A Northern India Mughal Small Carved Ivory Casket with Gilt Metal Mounts
The interior divided into six sections for spices or medicinal substances
Late 17th Century

Size: 4.5cm high, 10.5cm wide, 5.5cm deep - 1¾ ins high, 4¼ ins wide, 2¼ ins deep

Provenance:
Ex Cserno collection Netherlands

CITES permit: 2025/BE01027/CE

The North Indian Mughal craftsmen had an extraordinary love of surface embellishment and decorated their products with floral and abstract patterns using many different techniques. The enormous wealth of the Mughal emperors was a magnet which attracted talented craftsmen from many countries to the Royal workshops where they developed their skills and passed them on over generations.
In the late 17th century the craftsmen began to reconcile the long standing decorative Mughal motifs with those of newly introduced flowering plants and created more naturalistic, formal floral compositions as carved on this box. Boxes and caskets were made for both domestic and foreign markets, some completely of ivory, others set with ivory plaques or profusely inlaid, with those destined for European export often the most ornately decorated.