Boxes

Vizagapatam

Eastern Indian

• 10 x 30 x 21 cms
  Circa 1720

Of ebony inlaid with ivory and highlighted with lac. The box is rectangular, the lid, front, sides and back all inlaid with fine scrolling and looping vines with leaves and flowers. The entire design is framed by rectangular borders and outer ivory borders. The lid has a central silver monogram with an Earl’s coronet this is enclosed within a chevron border.

This box, with its complex design of fine, inlaid scrolling vines is part of a group of boxes and cabinet ware dating from the first-half of the eighteenth century.  “A box worked in a similar manner, but whose lid is inlaid with vines emanating from urns, was owned by Jan Albert Sichterman, a VOC official from Groningen who was in Bengal from 1719 to 1741. Another writing box worked in a similar manner, the ivory lozenge on the lid bearing its owners coat of arms was owned by the VOC official, Frans Willem Falck who died in Ceylon in 1737 and is now in the Rijksmuseum NG 854. There is a third related box mounted on a mid 18th Century Dutch walnut stand at Menkemaborg, Groningen .”

For a related box in the Victoria & Albert Museum collection (V & A: 402-1854) see 'Furniture from British India & Ceylon' by Amin Jaffer - No. 37