While in Benares (Varanasi) in 1884, Isabella Gardner bought some “muradabad work” (March 5, 1884), probably [this] tray still in the collection.¹ Although the combination of lac and metal was not unique to Moradabad (it is also found in Kashmir, for example), the technique was principally employed in the Moradabad region.

Although inspired by visually similar bidri ware (produced by inlays of mainly silver on an alloy of zinc and copper), Moradabad work is a different technique. The yellowish surface of the tray is a copper alloy, while the silver or white areas on the front and back are tin.² The black designs were created by applying a lac coating, now rather fragile and brittle. The Moradabad technique was described by George Birdwood in 1880: “tin is soldered on brass, and incised through the brass in floriated patterns, which sometimes are simply marked . . . by graving out the whole ground between the scrolls, and filling it with a blackened composition of lac.”³ George Watt in 1903 states that lac was applied “by a hot bolt, which fuses and distributes the lac over the surface. The excess smeared beyond the design is removed by sand or brick-dust and water, by sand-paper or by means of a file. The surface is next polished, and the pattern appears in colours within the metallic surface.”⁴

Made for the tourist trade, this tray seems to have been bought by Isabella Gardner at a hotel in Varanasi. The building depicted on the tray recalls local monuments. Several buildings in nearby Lucknow also have onion-shaped domes, domed kiosks (chhatris), and arched entrances. The Bara Imambara in Lucknow, a complex of structures built around 1784, with many gateways, courtyards, and monumental facades, may have been the source of the motif.

¹ Displayed in the Macknight Room, but it may have been placed in the Dutch Room by Isabella Gardner.

² The tin layer could have been applied in a hot metal process or as a cold plating process where metal sheets are milled together. The tin layer on the front is very thin, pointing to a hot process.

³ George C. M. Birdwood, The Industrial Arts of India, South Kensington Museum Art Handbooks (London, 1880): vol. 1, p. 156.

⁴ Sir George Watt, India Art at Delhi, 1903, Being the Official Catalogue of the Dehli Exhibition, 1902-1903 (Calcutta, 1903): 15.

Source: Pedro Moura Carvalho, “Jewelry and Objects from India,” in Journeys East: Isabella Stewart Gardner and Asia, edited by Alan Chong and Noriko Murai (Boston: ISGM and Gutenberg Periscope, 2009): 461-462.

Probably purchased in Benares (Varanasi) in 1884.