Mughal Zinc Cooling Bottle with Silver Mounts & Fabric Covering

This bottle comprises a bulbous base typically hammered and raised from plain zinc sheet, and a neck and stopper of high-grade solid silver. The neck has been chased with a spiraling motif rising out of and acanthus leaf border, mirrored by another such border at the top. The shoulder is chased with petal motifs in high relief followed by a rope-twist border.

The rim has a raised border, and the domed stopper decorated with two differing tiers of petals and with a small loop finial, sits in the opening of the neck.

The original silver chain links the lid to a loop on the neck.

The base is covered completely in a red-dyed muslin that has been carefully gathered and pleated around the base.

Bottles such as this example were used to cool liquids – water or perhaps wine. The cloth on the base would be soaked with a water and saltpetre solution to chill the contents.

An example of a similar style cooling bottle is illustrated in Terlinden (1987, p. 114.) An Ottoman example comprises lot 126 in Christie’s London, ‘Islamic Art and Manuscripts’, October 12, 2004.

Zinc as a metal, was prized throughout the Islamic world in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. By the second half of the seventeenth century metalworkers had discovered that zinc was quite malleable at only a little above the boiling point of water so making vessels from sheet zinc became more widespread.

A similar example that was first mentioned in the inventory of the Royal Danish Kunstkammer in 1741 and is now in the National Museum of Denmark is illustrated in Dam-Mikkelsen & Lundbaek, 1980, p. 102. Another is in the Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, Russia.

The example here is in fine condition. The silver, which is over a clay core or similar, has some minor denting from age and use.

Above: An example in the Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, Russia. This example no longer has its fabric covering thereby revealing its zinc base.