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Originally Posted by Jens Nordlunde
Hi Radu,
To say from where different enamel works come is not easy, other than some colours were made more successfully in some places than in others, and that some colours were only made in one place, like light blue in Lahore. This said, I am aware of that enamellers minakars did travel, or maybe more correctly, were ‘moved’ to other centres. About this Hendley writes in ‘Jeypore Enamels’: ‘Maharaja Man Singh (1590-1615) is stated to have brought five Sikh enamel workers from Lahore, and the fact that the descendants of these men still produce their colours (1886) from that town to carry on the trade of there forefathers confirms that tradition’. So someone working in the Delhi style suddenly found himself working somewhere else – but I doubt that he changed his style, as this was part of his family tradition, learned from father to son for many generations. This ‘moving’ around would lead to a mixture of styles in the different centres, the newer the enamelled items are, the bigger the mixture would become in the different centres, so I have no problem with Mysore.
Here is what T.H.Hendley writes, in ‘Ulwar and its Art Treasurers’, about the sword bought in Bernares in 1854, and since then in the Ulwar armoury: ‘Plate XXXIV. Sword. Shamsher khurasani. Curved steel blade, with silver enamelled sword hilt’. He then goes on describing the sword in detail. He does not explain the word khurasani, but as the word shamsher refers to the type of blade, the word khurasani must, I think, refer to the type of hilt. Could be that this kind of hilts origin from Khorasan/Khurasan where Merv/Marv is, NW of Afghanistan; on, or close to the Silk Road – I don’t know at the moment.
The Makkara is the Indian word for this monster used widely in the SEA area; it is even used on old Tibetan and Nepalese bronze sculptures, as part of their religious symbolism, and it most likely goes back to ancient time.
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