Ceremonial mace (chob), wood overlaid with mother of pearl, Mughal, ca. 1600.

Ceremonial mace (chub), wood overlaid with mother of pearl secured with brass pins, with copper handle and finial.

Curzon Bequest

"In India, as in Europe, the mace was both an instrument of war and, in a ceremonial context, a symbol of authority. Mace-bearers or stick-bearers (chubdars) appear in depictions of Mughal court scenes, usually standing outside the inner railings that surround the ruler. Their function appears to have been that of regulating entry to the immediate precincts of the throne; in the Padshanamah manuscript, for example, they appear only in presentation scenes in which objects of value are in evidence or where some level of security is needed. Mughal arms were often highly decorated and made of precious materials; the Emperor Jahangir (reigned 1605-27) himself refers in his memoirs to a six-flanged mace (shashpar) made out of solid gold. Maces such as these are unlikely to have been made for any other purpose than to be used in court ceremony.

Mother-of-pearl was certainly a favoured material at the Mughal court. In 1616 Sir Thomas Roe observed at the emperors camp near Agra, 'a throwne of mother of pearle borne on two pilla[r]s raysd on earth', and at celebrations for New Year (Nowruz), he saw among the decorations a square 'pavilion' (possibly a canopy throne) of 'wood, inlayd with mother of pearle'. Such articles were probably the work of artisans from Gujarat, where mother-of-pearl was worked into the decoration of luxury goods for consumption within India and for export to markets in the Middle East and Europe.

The decoration of this mace relates closely to that of the tomb canopy erected in the mausoleum of Shaykh Salim Chishti at Fatehpur Sikri (1571-81), near the Mughal capital at Agra. It is difficult to know whether the canopy was made in Gujarat and simply constructed at Fatehpur Sikri, or built by Gujarati craftsmen working in situ. What is clear, however, is that it was installed at some point before 1610, in which year English traveller Ralph Finch noted 'the faire and sumptuous tombe, artificially inlaied with mother of pearle and inclosed with a grating of stone curiously carvd'."
Amin Jaffer, Luxury Goods From India: the art of the Indian Cabinet-Maker, London : V&A, 2002, p.36, ill. ISBN: 1 85177 381 9.

Paintings in miniature and chronicles of the Mughal court reveal that ceremonial maces were often richly ornamented and made of luxurious materials, this piece being a rare surviving example. The mother-of-pearl decoration on its surface relates closely to a tomb canopy erected (before 1610) over the mausoleum of Shaykh Salim Chisti at Fatehpur Sikri. In style and technique the application of mother-of-pearl plaques over a wooden carcase is typical of a vast group of objects made in workshops in western India's Gujarat region. These objects were for local consumption as well as for export to Ottoman Turkey, the Middle East and Europe. This piece was either made in Gujarat or executed by Gujarati craftsmen working at the Mughal court.

IM.228-1927