A cast bronze ewer, India, 18th century

the pear-shaped body with pedestal base standing on four small feet, straight spout and serpentine handle with dragon and lion-head terminals, hinged domed cover, decorated with chiselled lotus petals around the shoulder and base, engraved allover with foliate and floral motifs

A similar North Indian eighteenth-century ewer in the Museum für Islamische Kunst, Berlin, is illustrated in Zebrowski 1997, p.164, no.234. Zebrowski relates the lotus petals encircling a number of these eighteenth-century ewers as a throwback to the lotus thrones of medieval Hindu and Buddhist metal sculpture.  A ewer with similar engraved decoration and straight spout is in the Brooklyn Museum, New York (see Dye 2001, p.400, fig.93).