Tara Desjardins begins her book Mughal Glass by describing her surprise and puzzlement when confronted by a painted Mughal glass hookah base in the early 2010s.
Despite having held curatorial positions at the V&A, London and the San Diego Museum of Art, after obtaining her Doctorate from SOAS, and having also been Islamic Art specialist at the prestigious French and British auction houses, Tajun and Christies, Desjardins was unfamiliar at the time with India’s glorious blown glass traditions, or MG Dikshit’s seminal treatise on The History of Indian Glass (1969).
The glassware sparked her interest and a decade of research. Desjardins is currently South Asia Curator at the stunning Museum of Islamic Art, Doha, Qatar.
In India of course, our museums are full of glorious examples of Mughal glass. Visiting the Salarjung Museum in Hyderabad as a child, seeing all the weird and wonderful clutter of artefacts that Salarjung collected (most priceless, but some plain tacky! Canalettos and priceless gold and jewelled jade sharing the space with a collection of walking sticks and cuckoo clocks!), I was most struck by the exquisite Mughal glass collections. Crystal and blown glass goblets, hookah bases, bowls, bottles, platters and jugs, even spittoons, beautifully curved, with delicate swanlike necks. Exquisite translucent reds, blues and greens in jewel shades, etched, inlaid and enamelled with gold. Fluted and melon shaped, with spirals, chevrons, and trifoliated designs and sprays of flowers running up their sides. Their beauty and delicacy were magical.