Image of Gallery in South Kensington
On display at V&A South Kensington
Ceramics, Room 137, The Curtain Foundation Gallery

tile

Tile
ca. 1650 (made)
Place of origin

This tile is one of a group acquired from Mr. Frederick H. Andrews in 1923. He had been living in Srinagar and wrote to the museum in 1922 offering to sell his collection before he left that year to return to the UK. All were acquired in Kashmir, and were stated to have come from the 'tomb of Madani' in Srinagar. The tomb is actually that of Sayyid Muhammad Hussain Madani whose mosque, dated 1444, is next to it. The tiles themselves are later, produced in the reign of Shah Jahan (r. 1628-58), for a ceremonial gateway to the tomb and mosque. The gateway was originally richly embellished with polychrome tiles. Details of what little remained were recorded in the Annual Report of the Archaeological Survey of India for 1908-1909. A chromolithograph illustration shows part of a mythical beast with the body of a leopard and the trunk of a human being shooting a bow and arrow. The beast may be identified as the figure of Sagittarius (Qaus), and this tile can be matched exactly from the depiction of its rear quarters, including part of the tail and testicles. Almost all the tiles have now been removed from the site, with a large number of heavily degraded pieces now in the Srinigar museum.


Object details

Category
Object type
Titletile (generic title)
Materials and techniques
Earthenware with glazed decoration in cuerda seca
Brief description
Glazed earthenware, Mughal, ca. 1650
Physical description
Fragment of a tile depicting a mythical animal, here showing part of its yellow body with orange testicles and a green splodge, on a cobalt blue ground.
Dimensions
  • Maximum height: 21.3cm
  • Maximum width: 11.2cm
  • Depth: 3.2cm
Styles
Object history
This tile is one of a group of 63 acquired in 1923 from Mr Frederick H. Andrews. He had been living in Srinagar where he had been Director of the Technical Institute of Kashmir and wrote to the museum in 1922 offering to sell his collection before he left that year to return to the UK. The tiles are stated to have come from the tomb of Madani near But Kadal in Srinagar, Kashmir. The building dates from the mid-fifteenth century, but it was refurbished by a Mughal nobleman in Shah Jahan’s time.
Summary
This tile is one of a group acquired from Mr. Frederick H. Andrews in 1923. He had been living in Srinagar and wrote to the museum in 1922 offering to sell his collection before he left that year to return to the UK. All were acquired in Kashmir, and were stated to have come from the 'tomb of Madani' in Srinagar. The tomb is actually that of Sayyid Muhammad Hussain Madani whose mosque, dated 1444, is next to it. The tiles themselves are later, produced in the reign of Shah Jahan (r. 1628-58), for a ceremonial gateway to the tomb and mosque. The gateway was originally richly embellished with polychrome tiles. Details of what little remained were recorded in the Annual Report of the Archaeological Survey of India for 1908-1909. A chromolithograph illustration shows part of a mythical beast with the body of a leopard and the trunk of a human being shooting a bow and arrow. The beast may be identified as the figure of Sagittarius (Qaus), and this tile can be matched exactly from the depiction of its rear quarters, including part of the tail and testicles. Almost all the tiles have now been removed from the site, with a large number of heavily degraded pieces now in the Srinigar museum.
Bibliographic reference
Susan Stronge, ‘Tile Revetments in the Reign of Shah Jahan’, in Ebba Koch in collaboration with Ali Anooshahr, eds, The Mughal Empire from Jahangir to Shah Jahan. Art, Architecture, Politics, Law and Literature, Marg Publications, Mumbai 2019, pp 220-245 (plate 12, p. 231).
Collection
Accession number
IM.242-1923

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Record createdJanuary 22, 2008
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