Burmese Silver Bowl with the Eight Planets

Silver Bowl Repoussed with the Symbols of the Eight Planets (Gyo-shit-lon)

This fine small Burmese silver bowl appears to be older than most extant colonial era silver bowls. The decoration is more restrained and in lower relief and also concerned more with Burmese astrology than in portraying scenes that colonialists might have appreciated.

It shows the symbols of the eight planets (known in Burmese as the

gyo-shit-lon). They are depicted in roundels that are surrounded by rococo-like scrollwork and between varying lotus petal borders.

The base is engraved with a Burmese

chinthe figure.

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.

UK art market