19th Century Anglo-Indian Sikh Regiment Watercolor

PRESENTING A GORGEOUS 19C Anglo Indian Rosewood Caddy with Silver Mounts. Really nice and unusual, 19th Century Anglo-Indian Spice or Tea Caddy, from cir...

19C Anglo Indian solid silver perfume bottle case. Lovely 19th century Anglo-Indian solid silver perfume bottle case with profuse repousse work. Not hallmarked because it was m...

Presenting a superb 19C Anglo Indian Sadeli Mosaic greeting card case. Made in or around Bombay, India circa 1880. This is a greeting card case used for holding your greeting cards or business cards of the day ! The body of the case is made from sandalwood and it is fully overlaid with bone and highly intricate Sadeli Mosaic made up of thousands of micro mosaic pieces of bone, ebony, silver/pewter and semi precious stone. The workmanship is stupenduous !!!! This case is almost museum quality. One or two very, very minor losses of mosaic mainly where the top meets the body but otherwise near mint ! SADELI MOSAIC: “Anglo Indian boxes were made in India for the English residents from the early part of the 18th century. They were brought back or sent back to England usually by the people who had commissioned them. From the beginning of the nineteenth century they were imported more commercially, although not in any significant numbers until the middle decades. They were very highly valued, especially the early ones, to the extent that the designs were copied on late 19th and early 20th century tins. The ancient art of Sadeli Mosaic is said to have been introduced from Shiraz in Persia via Sind to Bombay, a long time before the Anglo Indian boxes were made. It was a technique, which required a high degree of skill and patience. It was executed very lavishly, in that the frequent cuts wasted a great amount of the precious materials used. The workmanship was however more than commensurable to the value of the materials. Ivory, silver, pewter (or other metals), wood and horn were cut into faceted rods which were bound together to form geometric patterns. When the glue has set, the rods were sliced in transverse sections. This gave the maker a number of angled circular pieces in the original pattern. Several variations of patterns could be achieved by combining the materials in different ways. The ivory was sometimes dyed green to give an extra color. The mosaic pieces in a combination of patterns, often separated by ivory, ebony, horn or silver stringing were used to veneer sandalwood boxes. In the early boxes, which date from the turn of the 18th to the 19th century, there are large panels of mosaic covering tops and sides of boxes. It took incredible skill to cover such large areas without any shakes or wavering of the pattern. The corners and joins on these boxes are impeccably matched. The makers (reputed to be Persian) of Sadeli mosaic made in the first two decades of the 19th century displayed a total understanding of the qualities of the different materials they used. They combined substances, which can expand and contract according to atmospheric conditions with others, which are hard and unyielding. The result was a sharp definition of the lines and patterns, which made up the whole design. On the early boxes the designs look deceptively simple. The fact is, they emerged from a culture, which had mastered geometry and understood how to generate a pattern from a set number of points. The patterns are so harmoniously combined that their incredible complexity is not immediately apparent. The earliest Sadeli boxes...

PRESENTING A RARE AND DESIRABLE 19C Anglo Indian Highly Carved Padouk and Mosaic Folio Cover. This is a VERY RARE piece of Anglo-Indian and British Victorian Colonial history! ...

Presenting an absolutely gorgeous and very rare 19C Anglo Indian Vizigapatam stamp box. Made in Colonial India (the Time of the Raj) circa 1860. Prob...

PRESENTING a LOVELY Pair of 19C J Saile Scottish Highland Watercolors. Both watercolors feature a Scottish Highland scene with mountain in the background, mist, rock outcrops, heath...

Vintage pair of Anglo Indian watercolors depicting men on horseback decorated with gold leaf floral and geometric designs. Presented in wood frames with gold leaf under glass.

Charming and naive 19th century watercolor of a bull in its original bird's-eye maple frame.  

A late 19th century botanical watercolor depicting a spring blossom.

Watercolor on paper mounted on masonite board with ornate gilt frame. Dimensions: (Board) H 13.5" x W 10"

A late 19th century botanical watercolor study. Watercolor on paper set within a reeded giltwood frame.

A late 19th century watercolor and pencil study of a golden clematis, Clematis Tangutica. Watercolor and pencil on paper set within a reeded giltwood frame.