407. Lacquer Sufi Kashkul Dish, Persia or Kashmir, India

Large Painted & Lacquered Kashkul Dish

This finely painted and lacquered dish is stylised after the kashkuls or begging bowls used by Sufi mystics. It comprises a lacquered encasing over a metal interior with either ends terminating in stylised zoomorphic finials.

The dish is profusely painted and gilded with finely rendered bands of flowers, vines and foliage; the lower lunettes of flowers being in the style of that employed on 18th and 19th century Qajar mirror and Koran cases.