Lot 297. A gem-set enamelled gold box, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India, mid 19th century. Estimate: £6,000-£8,000. © Chiswick Auctions. 

Of octagonal shape, with faceted domed lid, the eight lateral walls with alternating white and gold grounds with champlevé red, green and blue enamels decoration depicting flowers, foliage and peacocks, framed within two geometric bands in light blue enamel, the base richly ornate with a central dark blue medallion with gold trellis surrounded by a floral band of red flowers and their foliage, the hinged lid with a bud-shaped dark blue finial set with four diamonds rising from a low octagonal step painted in light blue and red enamels, the eight dark blue panels of the lid set with multi-faceted diamonds in simple kundan arranged to form flowers, opposite the hinge a small catch with two gold spheres, the interior enamelled in translucent green over engraved panels, 4.3cm high and 4.2cm diam. 

Provenance: UK-based private noble collection since 1960s. 

Note: This small enamelled gold box is an exquisite example of 19th-century Jaipur's enamel tradition. At a time when North India was already under the British rule and contacts with the West became more and more prominent, the Jaipuri craftsmen looked back at the Mughal past and found the inspiration to accomplish enamelled and encrusted works of very high calibre, which both honoured their tradition and introduced fresher designs. As Rita Devi Sharma states, the motif of the peacock is absent from Mughal pieces produced up to the mid-18th century. In the 19th century instead, this motif becomes a favourite in the Jaipuri enamelled arts (Rita Devi Sharma and M. Varadarajan, Les Bijoux Artisanaux Indiens en Émail, 2004, p. 37). The translucent blue, green and red enamels combined with kundan-set faceted diamonds become a manifesto of this later tradition and the interiors of important small objects tend to be enriched with a decorative technique present in several 17th-century royal commissions called partajikam. This consists of covering a chiselled gold surface, mostly worked in the form of thick foliage, with translucent champlevé monochrome enamel, often green (Rita Devi Sharma, p. 32). All of the above-mentioned characteristics are showcased in this octagonal box, making it an important and accomplished example of 19th-century Jaipuri enamel tradition. An almost identical box is part of The Nasser D. Khalili Collection, dated to the mid-19th century. For further reference, please see Pedro Moura Carvalho, Gems and Jewels of Mughal India, 2010, p. 286, fig. 166).

Chiswick Auctions, Islamic & Indian Art, London, United Kingdom, October 26, 2018, 1:00 PM