tile
Tile
ca. 1650 (made)
ca. 1650 (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 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 illustration allows this tile to be identified as having belonged to the border of the spandrel revetment.
Object details
| Category | |
| Object type | |
| Title | tile (generic title) |
| Materials and techniques | earthenware with cuerda seca decoration |
| Brief description | Glazed earthenware, Mughal, ca. 1650. Rectangular border tile with brown, blue and white floral arabesques on a yellow ground with blue and yellow borders. |
| Physical description | Rectangular border tile with one corner broken away. It has a central band with a yellow ground decorated with a blue rosette and two curving stems with feathery leaves, alternatively reversed. Either side of this are two blue stripes. |
| Dimensions |
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| 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 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. |
| 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 illustration allows this tile to be identified as having belonged to the border of the spandrel revetment. |
| 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 13, p. 231). |
| Collection | |
| Accession number | IM.304-1923 |
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| Record created | June 25, 2009 |
| Record URL |
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