Silver Burmese Bowl, Colonial Burma

Fine, Repoussed Silver Bowl with Repoussed with a Burmese Legend

Burma

circa 1880

diameter: 16cm, height: 10cm, weight: 602g

This fine, colonial Burmese bowl is repoussed with seven panels of scenes of multiple figures in Burmese dress, all in high relief. The scenes draw on a Burmese legend. One appears to show Ma Mei U being carried off by a nat spirit. Another shows a hunter and a deer.

All the figures are in particularly precise, high relief. The scenes are separated by pendant, scrolling foliage and bordered by a raised, scrolling orchid border at the top, and a wide, flaring leaf border below.

The base is plain and unadorned.

The shape of such bowls are based on Burmese Buddhist monks’ plain metal begging bowls, but they have no utilitarian function whatsoever and were intended to be purely decorative.

References

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.

Provenance

UK art market

Inventory no.: 2456

SOLD