Tibetan Pair of Silver Butter Lamps inset with Turquoise

This elegant pair of yak butter lamps is of hand-beaten, high-grade solid silver. Their form is reminiscent of the Christian chalice and they would have been used on an altar, filled to the brim with yak butter oil and with a single wick floating in each.

The baluster-form stems comprise mid-sections in the form of kalasha or longevity vases finely engraved with lotus flower decoration and each with four ‘jewelled’ straps that terminate with trefoil pendants set with turquoise cabochons.

The outside walls of the bowl or basin of each lamp is with decorated with rows of applied bead-like petal motifs and ‘pearled. silver wire.

The bases are flared and are beautifully decorated with lotus petal gadrooning all in high relief.

Typically, such lamps are found today as single lamps, but across the Himalayas in temples and monasteries, they are always used in pairs. So it is unusual to find today an old pair that is a true pair.

They are in excellent condition with only the one very minor loss of a tiny applied silver bead to the underside of the rim of one of the lamps.