An Indo-Portuguese Gujarati casket

Exceptionally rare silver-mounted rectangular tortoiseshell casket of dual pitched lid, certainly manufactured in a Gujarati workshop in the second half of the 16th century.

The case and the lid of this small casket were cut from plates of translucent speckled tortoiseshell from the Hawksbill Turtle (Eretmochelys Imbricata) and underlayed by gold leaf giving it deep contrasting tones and sophisticated beauty.

The plaques are joined at the angles by indented silver strips with large and exhuberantly decorated corner pieces, fixed by small seven-pointed star round-headed tacks and decorated with a common matrix of chased and repoussé motifs of animals, birds and swirling trifoil floral elements.

The hinges, lock, latch and handle are adorned according to the same chased and repoussé techniques following na identical decorative language. The lock is boxed and raised within a zigzag motif band frame and engraved with a bird and vegetal patterns. The latch is fixed to the lid by round-headed silver tacks. The decorative scheme is completed by a punctured

background that highlights the artistic accomplishment of the piece.

The two lid profiles are silver wrapped and each surfasse defined by a central axis of winding floral motifs, decorated symmetrically with pairs of animals, heads bent backwards, in

a depiction characteristic of early Middle Eastern art and often used in Mughal decorative compositions. A central rounded hoop and naturalistic snake head finials enrich the handle’s

twisted rope design.

The rarity of this casket relates not only to the precious and exclusive materials that it employs, and to the sophisticated manufacturing techniques involved in its construction, but also to its atypical two gabled architectural form alluding to popular Portuguese religious buildings, thus transforming it into a rather striking example.

The chased and repoussé decoration of scrolled vegetal patterns, al-tawriq in Arabic, with stylized leafs and split stalks, share a common root with Islamic Cordovan art of the 9th and 10th centuries.

According to Nuno Vassalo e Silva this type of Islamic derived decoration, of floral and vegetal scrolls interspersed with animals on a tightly punctured background ‘was a decorative scheme well known in Northern India’, and one that would later be widely assimilated and repeated by silversmiths in the various Indian Portuguese territories.