Superb Mughal Parcel-Gilt Silver Perfume Flask

This splendid, tall perfume flask is of unusually high-grade silver with parcel gilding (ganga-jamni). The body of the flask is of flattened spherical form. Both sides of the body have been beautifully repoussed in high-relief with elaborate iris blooms.

The flask sits on a domed, pierced foot, and has a slender, plain neck which opens to a mouth bordered by leaf motifs and in which a plump, parcel-gilt, pine cone-like stopper sits. To this is attached a long, cylindrical silver perfume applicator which glides into the neck of the flask. The stopper is attached to the neck with a silver chain.

The flask is a striking example of 18th century Mughal silverwork. It is also somewhat rare – perfume flasks of this form are encountered rarely; rosewater sprinklers are much more typical.

The iris bloom was an important motif to the Mughals. The form permeated much of the Mughal empire by the 18th century and across many media in the arts.

See Terlinden (1987, p. 118) for a comparable opium water or wine flask (chuski) similarly decorated with parcel-gilt iris blooms.

Silver was seen as a ‘noble’ metal. The fact that the flask was intended for very personal use by a woman who was almost certainly aristocratic no doubt explains the unusually high purity of the silver used.

The flask is in excellent condition. It sits without rocking and is free of dents or splits.