Silver

Oomersi Mawji

Silver Tea & Coffee Set

• The coat of arms bears the following words ‘Pro Rege Et Patria’ under an extended arm with a hand holding a Lochaber axe of the Last.

The high quality of workmanship and style, the distinctive infinite scrolling foliage containing animals and hunting scenes, employed in the decoration of the set indicates that it originated in the workshop of Oomersi Mawji. Mawji was the best silversmith of the latter half of nineteenth-century India. His work is by far the most admired and sought after, both in India and abroad. For a comparative set see figure 121 on page 85 of ‘Indian Silver: 1848 – 1947’ by Wynyward Wilkinson.

The coat of arms on the tray are those of the Cameron family. As there were a number of Camerons in Bombay in the third quarter of the nineteenth century it could have been one of their number. Most likely to have commissioned this tea set would have been either Donald Cameron, a lieutenant in the Bombay Fusiliers or his brother, Colin John MacDonald Campbell, a captain in the 24th Bombay Native Infantry. They were sons of Captain Donald Cameron of the 21st Scots Fusilier Guards..