‘Mughal Glass’ | Tara Desjardins’ new book tracks the history of glassmaking in India

In a lyrical painting by the master Nainsukh, set in rolling mustard fields abloom in yellow, an aesthete Mian is on horseback with his gorgeous lady in red. The painting is spectacular because in the 18th century, with electronic speakers still in the future, two musicians accompany them, singing and drumming, while another bearer walks alongside holding a decorated glass hubble-bubble that the gentleman redolently smokes.

I have seen so many Indian paintings with huqqa bearers, but never thought much of them till I saw the luxurious gilded green glass base that adorns the cover of Mughal Glass – A History of Glassmaking in India. The ‘hubble-bubble’ is an onomatopoeic name for huqqas, the smoking apparatus that was floor or table set and one of the many Mughal pleasure pursuits. Its component parts — typically a globular or bell-shaped base, a tobacco holder and a mouthpiece — were fashioned from precious stones, metals and sometimes glass. Demerits of smoking apart, if anything, a huqqa always slowed the pace of a painting. Its presence meant leisure, refinement and a cadence of a time gone by.

Born of heat, used as luxury

The book by Tara Desjardins, curator of South Asia at Doha’s Museum of Islamic Art, presents as a catalogue the niche oeuvre of glass associated with the Mughal Empire (1526-1858) — easily some of the most beautiful objects made anywhere in time.

Glass as a material, with its ephemeral fragility, has often been relegated to the shadows by scholars of this period. Earlier books such as Mark Zebrowski’s Gold, Silver & Bronze from Mughal India brought ewers, huqqas and paandans into the popular imagination, as he painstakingly referenced these utility items from miniature paintings to show how they were used. That didactic approach widened the ability to look at historical objects, and Mughal Glass, for the first time, expands our view on decorative glassmaking for luxury utilitarian objects. Bursting with sprays of water lilies or nodding scarlet heads of poppies, the range of colours are incredible — from lapis blue to emerald green and my favourite, a deep purple.

Desjardins brings together a decade of focused scholarship in this compilation as she traces the many millennia of the Indian subcontinent’s romance with glass through beads, bangles and glazed objects. Trade exchanges with ancient glass blowing civilisations as well as archaeological excavations in the region have also been touched upon.

Drawn from museums such as the V&A in London and the Met in New York, auction house databases like Christies and Sotheby’s, and private collections in Hong Kong and Frankfurt, the lavishly illustrated book has collections of surviving decorated huqqa bases, bottles, ewers, cups and saucers. Refreshingly, the author has also included items from a cross-section of Indian sources, including the Salar Jung Museum in Hyderabad, and the National Museum in New Delhi, making it possible to compare the indigenous collections with international hierarchies.

The book also examines vitreous objects with art history tools such as X-ray spectrometry, making it a firm bedrock for future explorations on the subject.

An X-ray to tell stories

It is the inclusion of exhaustive scientific analysis — something fundamental to the study of historic objects and typically missing in Indian art historical studies — that forms a refreshing and key component of this book. For instance, the use of energy-dispersive X-ray spectrometry in the study of glass enables an elemental analysis of inherent components such as lime and alumina. It is an exciting research area because it helps determine geographic sources of both primary glass manufacturing in India and manufacturers who exported to the country.

An example is a huqqa base, now at the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington DC, believed to originally be from West Bengal or Bihar in the 18th century. An X-ray fluorescence analysis revealed a lead on the major element in the glass, and the museum entry of origin was changed to ‘United Kingdom’ as the object was established as a Jacobite style. In other words, while the shape of the glass huqqa suggested it was made in India, science established that it was manufactured in England for export to India.

In a rapidly changing 17th -18th century world of expanding trade connections, mercantile exchange and commerce that defined the fate of nations, Desjardins presents glass as a commodity and a form of artistic expression.

Around the world in glass

The art historian also brings the study of form, technique, and decorative styles to determine uniqueness of historic objects. Here, Desjardins’ scholarship shines, drawing from her career as a specialist in Islamic art at France’s largest auction house to being a curator. As she brings together dozens of glass objects “from California to Kuwait, Denmark to Delhi, identifying and creating a corpus of material that had previously been unknown to scholars of Islamic and Asian art”, a remarkable book emerges.

Her staggering research meticulously winds its way through collections around the world. Who knew that Salar Jung Museum holds the “single largest collection of glass huqqa bases in the world”? Or that the indigenous metal pikdans or spittoons, so common in this part of the world, would be made in free-blown glass, gilded, and find their way to museum collections in London and Doha.

On a more wistful note, I cannot help but notice that most of the beautiful glass forms in this book are not made anymore. Glass that kings, queens and the well-to-do cherished, born of heat and forever fragile, I am glad they are preserved in institutions and the pages of this magnificent compilation.

Published by Roli Books, the book is priced ₹2,995.

The writer is the founder-director of Eka Archiving Services.