Cover for bowl 02596(IS), circular, sixteen-lobed with a scalloped rim, a central attached finial and two attached flowers near the edge, pale greyish green nephrite jade, Lahore, India.

A cover for a bowl, generally circular but sixteen-lobed with a scalloped rim. It is slightly domed with an attached finial that has been carved as a multi-petalled flower bud. Fashioned in pale greyish green nephrite jade and polished all over, it is has been worked to a fine thinness. The underside is smooth and polished with sixteen radial ridges running approximately two-thirds in towards the centre, where they meet a circular recess. On the upper surface, there is a central ring of overlapping leaves carved in low relief that encircle the finial, and they extend as far as the recess on the underside. Each of the sixteen sections or panels of the lobed surface has been carved in low relief. On alternate sections, there is a depiction of an individual person, wearing a head dress and holding a leaf frond or fan in their right hand. In the other set of sections, there are depictions of various animals including an elephant, a lion and a snake. These depictions are bounded on the outside edge by a continuous band of a wavy plant stem with leaves, and on the inner end by a band of stylised leaves. On only two adjacent junctions of the panels, there are two attached, eight-petalled flowers, one of which has been used to cover where a defect, combined with the thinness of the cover, caused a small hole to be formed. There are a number of cracks and healed fractures all of which appear to be of natural origin.
The cover and bowl [02596(IS)] fit together very well, irrespective of their relative orientation.

From the Guthrie collection. The cover was separated from the bowl, which had been acquired from Guthrie by the Indian Museum. The cover was bought at the auction of Guthrie's estate in 1875 by Arthur Wells of Nottingham for £30.18s. He sold it to the museum in 1880.

This cover belongs to a covered bowl with two attached smaller bowls made from the same block of jade (02596(IS), also in this museum). It fits closely onto the bowl for which it was made, demonstrating considerable skill on the part of the lapidary who made it. The bowl was originally bought by the India Museum in London in 1868 from the famous collector Colonel Charles Seton Guthrie. For some reason the cover was not acquired at the same time, and was sold at auction in 1875 after Guthrie's death. It was bought at the sale by another collector, Arthur Wells, who subsequently sold it to this museum, reuniting the two components.
The piece was said to have been made in Lahore by a family of hereditary lapidaries, and it probably dates to the end of the 18th or early years of the 19th century.

IS.36-1880