OBJECTS
METAL
Bidriware Vase (Hookah Base)
India, late seventeenth or early eighteenth century
Blackened alloy of copper and zinc with silver inlay
H: 7 D: 6 1/4 inches
#JA001541
This fine Indian Bidriware vase, formerly a water pipe or hookah (huqqa) base, has a globular body decorated with a chevron pattern. This huqqa base would have originally been fitted with a long stem supporting a brazier and a pipe through which smoke would have been inhaled. Bidriware originated in Bidar, India in the fourteenth century, when an artisan from Iran, Abdullah bin Kaiser, was invited by the Bahamani Sultan to decorate royal palaces. He developed the technique with local craftsmen that gave birth to Bidriware, which became an important export art form prized as a symbol of wealth. Similarly shaped and decorated examples of early Bidriware huqqas are in the collection of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.
