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A Silver Ceylon Dresser Set
Kandy, Sri Lanka
19th century
This set comprises a mirror, four brushes (for clothes and hair), a shoe horn, a pair of glover stretchers, a button hook, two haircomb mounts and a perfume
bottle all sumptuously worked with silver finely repoussed with luxuriant scrolling vine and flower motifs.
The reverse of the mirror is particularly exquisite with a figural form emerging from foliage amid scrolling vines and pomegranate or pineapple flowers, a
central kirtimukha face and to either side, mythical birds.
The scrolling vine motif is known as narilata (female vine), the vine or creeper being a metaphor for a woman; the female form stylistically conforming to other
works from the Kandy region.
The motifs and workmanship evident in these pieces are comparable to that in a pair of Sri Lankan silver manuscript covers in the Norton Simon Museum,
dated to circa 1800 which seems too early. (See Pal, P., Art from Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia: Asian Art at the Norton Simon Museum, Volume 3, Yale
University Press, 2004, p. 70-71.)
Inventory no.: 335 SOLD
A Silver Ceylon Dresser Set
Kandy, Sri Lanka
19th century
This set comprises a mirror, four brushes (for clothes and hair), a shoe horn, a pair of glover stretchers, a button hook, two haircomb mounts and a perfume
bottle all sumptuously worked with silver finely repoussed with luxuriant scrolling vine and flower motifs.
The reverse of the mirror is particularly exquisite with a figural form emerging from foliage amid scrolling vines and pomegranate or pineapple flowers, a
central kirtimukha face and to either side, mythical birds.
The scrolling vine motif is known as narilata (female vine), the vine or creeper being a metaphor for a woman; the female form stylistically conforming to other
works from the Kandy region.
The motifs and workmanship evident in these pieces are comparable to that in a pair of Sri Lankan silver manuscript covers in the Norton Simon Museum,
dated to circa 1800 which seems too early. (See Pal, P., Art from Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia: Asian Art at the Norton Simon Museum, Volume 3, Yale
University Press, 2004, p. 70-71.)
Inventory no.: 335 SOLD
