Enquiry about object: 5617
Tall, Burmese Silver Beaker
Burma circa 1860
height: 16.5cm, diameter: 9.6cm, weight: 297g
Provenance
UK art market
This unusually tall beaker is of heavy, high-grade silver. It is of cylindrical form but with tapering sides. The height suggests it might have served as a vase.
It has been repoussed and chased with figures from the Burmese version of the Ramayana, all in traditional Burmese costume. The figures are beneath cusped arches and within leafy and petalled borders.
The work and the purity of the silver suggests that this is an earlier example of colonial Burmese silverware and might date more to the middle of the 19th century rather than towards the end.
The beaker is in fine condition.
References
Fraser-Lu, S., Silverware of South-East Asia, Oxford University Press, 1989.
Fraser-Lu, S., Burmese Crafts: Past and Present, Oxford University Press, 1994.
Tilly, H.L., The Silverwork of Burma (with Photographs by P. Klier), The Superintendent, Government Printing, 1902.
Tilly, H.L., Modern Burmese Silverwork (with Photographs by P. Klier), The Superintendent, Government Printing, 1904.
