Architecture, ceramic, glazed, Kashmir, C16-17

Part of a larger composition, this tile has a yellow ground painted with an orange and blue flower with shading in a manganese purplish-brown with pale pinkish highlights. The sallow green flower stalk has two curling pointed leaves with blue undersides and rises from a blue motif in the centre. A blue section of the design is on the lower left-hand part of the tile with a further part on the opposite side above which there are orange and manganese purple portions.

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 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. The tiles probably were made in Lahore.

IM.293-1923