Colonial-Era Silver And Shawls From India At Sackler Museum

CAMBRIDGE, MASS.

:Kashmir shawls and silver tableware produced in India during the colonial period (Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries) will be on display at the Arthur M. Sackler Museum August 27 to January 29. "Silver and Shawls: India, Europe and the Colonial Art Market" will feature some 30 pieces of silver and 11 shawls, most loaned by private collectors.

The objects, which illustrate the influence of colonial patrons and the international market on the de-sign and form of Indian decorative arts, were created at a time when foreign demand for Indian textiles and luxury goods was at its peak.

The silver tableware on display chronicles the dynamic changes in form that took place in Indian metalwork during the colonial period. As early as 1720, jewelers and goldsmiths from Britain were working in Madras and shortly after in Bombay, Calcutta and elsewhere in India. By the late 1700s, they expanded their production to silver tableware based on European forms but rede-signed to ac-commodate local styles of cooking and serving. Specialized containers and utensils were developed to warm and serve curries and roasted meat, to filter milk and claret and to cover drinking water.

In the Nineteenth Century, many expatriate gold and silversmiths began to employ Indian craftsmen who had been trained in indigenous styles. During the mid to late 1800s, these smiths began to embel-lish European-style objects with local designs. This hybrid style became popular after it was displayed in the Indian section of the Great Exhibition of London in 1851.

One famous workshop represented in the exhibition was that of Peter Orr & Sons, founded in Madras in 1851 by Peter Nicholas Orr, a watchmaker from London. One of the largest and most successful sil-ver manufacturers in India, the Orr workshop produced tablewares and gold, gilt and silver, "swami" jewelry populated with Indian deities and exotic scenes.

Visitors will see several pieces made by Peter Orr & Sons, including an oval tray with serpent border created in 1904 for presentation to a captain in the Ooregum Gold Mining Company of India; a "swami-style" gold necklace and earrings bequeathed to the Fogg Art Museum in 1895 by its founder, Mrs Wil-liam Hayes Fogg; and an engraved circular racing trophy from 1884 that is an exact copy of a gold dish given to the Prince of Wales on his visit to India in 1875 and 1876.

Hybrid silver was also produced in Indian-run workshops in other regional centers, particularly Lucknow, the capital of the Muslim kingdom of Awadh. Awadh was known for its traditional metals-mithing and enameling and its manufacture of textiles with gold and silver brocade and embroidery. Luck-now is represented by two objects: a Renaissance Revival ewer, made in 1860 and embellished with applied palmettes and round faces representing Surya, the Hindu sun god; and an unmarked sil-ver presentation bowl decorated with fish, the emblem of the Awadh kingdom.

From Kutch, a major center for textiles, embroidery, leatherwork and jewelry in western Gujarat state, comes extremely ornate silver that was favored by Europeans. Six objects in the show are from the famous workshop of Oomersi Mawji, who marked his silver with the initials OM and - true to his background as a cobbler - punched his designs into metal from the exterior. Visitors will see a striking claret jug, circa 1880, completely covered in punched-out foliage designs and embellished with a long silver cobra curled to form the pitcher's handle; a two-handled cup circa 1880 decorated with figures from Greek mythology; and a creamer jug from around 1894.

The history of the Kashmir shawl reached back centuries before colonial silver. What had been a local product with limited distribution and distinguished by the fineness and rarity of its materials became a product of exacting technical quality and artistic refinement under the Mughal emperors.

The first Mughal ruler, Emperor Akbar (reigned 1556-1605) had a large collection of shawls and fa-vored wearing them two at a time, stitched together back-to-back. This construction hid the loose threads on the reverse of the garments and offered added warmth and bulk. The emperor's shawls were renowned for their fine material (pashmina, the fine winter underhair of the Himalayan goat), excep-tional technique and refined decoration.

Among the textiles on display in "Silver and Shawls" will be a fragment of a twill tapestry-woven pashmina shawl made in Kashmir circa 1810 to 1815; an 1810 painting by Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830) portraying Abu'l Hassan, the Persian ambassador to the Court of St James in 1890-1910, wear-ing a Kashmir shawl wrapped around his head as a turban in a style highly popular in Iran at the time; an open field white shawl dating to 1805, which features the buta (literally, "flower") design, progenitor of the Western "paisley" motif.

For information, 617-495-9400 or www.artmuseums. harvard.edu.a