tile
Tile
second quarter of the 17th century (made)
second quarter of the 17th century (made)
| Artist/Maker | |
| 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 in the early 20th century were recorded in the Annual Report of the Archaeological Survey of India for 1908-1909. A border tile with the same design as this one was found in a pile of rubble next to the tomb in the 1980s, and is now in the Sri Pratap Singh Museum in Srinagar.
Object details
| Categories | |
| Object type | |
| Title | tile (generic title) |
| Materials and techniques | Earthenware, glazed in cuerda seca technique |
| Brief description | Tile; Mughal, probably Kashmir, mid-17th century |
| Physical description | Tile, with part of a border design of scrolling pattern with animals heads in pale green and yellow on brown ground, between stripes of yellow and green. |
| Dimensions |
|
| Styles | |
| Object history | This tile is one of a group 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 said 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. |
| Production | 17th century or earlier |
| 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 in the early 20th century were recorded in the Annual Report of the Archaeological Survey of India for 1908-1909. A border tile with the same design as this one was found in a pile of rubble next to the tomb in the 1980s, and is now in the Sri Pratap Singh Museum in Srinagar. |
| Bibliographic reference | Skelton, Robert, et al, The Indian Heritage. Court life and Arts under Mughal Rule London: The Victoria and Albert Museum, 1982
cat. no.5
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. See Plate 20, p. 238. |
| Collection | |
| Accession number | IM.297-1923 |
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| Record created | May 17, 2000 |
| Record URL |
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