A Rare Collection of Workshop Drawings
from the Renowned Indian Silversmith, Oomersi Mawji.

This exhibition features seventy-five, previously unknown, meticulous works on paper, of silver objects and jewelry produced by Oomersi Mawji, and later his sons, from the 1860’s through the firm’s final years in the early 1930’s.

 

During his lifetime -- from his humble beginnings as a member of the cobbler’s caste in Bhuj, in the region of Kutch in Gujarat -- Oomersi Mawji became the most celebrated Indian silversmith during the Raj period, with a large international clientele. He participated in major international exhibitions and became the court silversmith to the Maharaja of Kutch. Today, scholars laud him as perhaps the greatest silversmith of the Nineteenth century. 

 

Luxury goods from India were first widely introduced at the Indian section of the Great Exhibition of London in 1851 (with its 15,000 objects), as well as numerous other exhibitions in Europe, America and India during the latter half of the Nineteenth Century. The Indian exhibits had an enormous influence, introducing the Indian aesthetic to the world market, and dramatically influenced the silver produced by Tiffany, Gorham, and Whiting in America, who incorporated Indian styles into their work. By 1885, the department store, Liberty & Co., brought forty “living village artisans” from India, including Kutch silversmiths, to London, opening a promotional workshop, selling these popular silverwares at their store in London and through their catalogues. To say there was something of a craze in Europe and America at the end of the Nineteenth Century for things Indian, is not an overstatement. Oomersi Mawji (whose maker’s mark was OM), from his workshop in Bhuj, was at the forefront.

 

The collection of drawings in the Marc J. Matz gallery exhibition --together with a number of designs, which were previously published in V. Dehijia’s Delight in Design, Indian Silver for the Raj, and others from the Oppi Untracht collection, which are now in the British Museum-- complete a more detailed picture of the Oomersi Mawji workshop.

 

Many of the drawings include Mawji’s trademark intricate, densely scrolling vines and animal motifs: his elephants in combat and his birds placed in branches as if they were ornaments in a magnificent Mughal palace textile. From the drawings, we learn that Mawji, not only produced magnificent repoussé silver, but also incorporated an extensive array of exotic materials, favored during the Raj period, into his work, including: mother-of-pearl, ebony, elephant’s ivory, boar’s teeth and tiger’s claws. The latter of which, were used with gold in several magnificent jewelry designs.

 

 

In their day, the highly detailed Oomersi Mawji workshop drawings were not only intended to guide the master craftsman, but also to exhibit work to prospective clients. Some of the drawings are inscribed with notes referencing specific clients, whose names appear in the inscriptions, along with gold and silver weights, dimensions, and their making charge in Indian rupees. These works on paper, offer an extraordinary glimpse into the design process itself, showing an individual piece from several perspectives on a single sheet, most on English watermarked paper, the earliest dated 1863. Other sheets have dated watermarks from the last three decades of the 19th century, while inscriptions on specific drawings bear the dates: 1899,1904 and 1914.

 

Today, examples from Oomersi Mawji’s workshop are included in major museums and private collections: from the classic tea set held at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London (related drawings are included in the Matz exhibit), to the cobra water jug at the Musee Guimet in Paris, and to a Kutch rosewater sprinkler at Harvard’s Arthur M. Sackler Musum.  Five years ago, the Sackler exhibited six masterworks by Oomersi Mawji in its exhibition Silver and Shawls. The design drawing for a presentation trowel, similar to one exhibited at the Sackler, is now included in the Matz exhibition.

 

 

 

For further reading:

 

Vidya Dehejia, Delight in Design – Indian Silver for the Raj, Mapin Publishing, India, 2008.

 

Watt and Brown, Indian Art at Delhi, 1903, Being the Official Catalogue of the Delhi Exhibition, 1902-03, Calcutta, Superintendent of Government Printing, India, 1903.

 

Wynyard R.T. Wilkinson, Indian Silver 1858-1949, Silver from the Indian Subcontinent and Burma, London, WRT Wilkinson, 1987