As a child holidaying in Hyderabad with my grandparents, I was mesmerized by the exquisite Mughal glass collections in the Salarjung Museum—cut glass, crystal and blown glass goblets, hookah bases, bowls, bottles, platters and jugs, even spittoons—beautifully curved, with delicate swanlike necks. Beautiful 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 enchanted me.
Thirty years on, as designer-merchandiser for the Taj Hotel Khazana arcade in the late 70s, I was keen to reproduce some of these beautiful pieces. A trip to Firozabad, for long a home of Indian glass making, was sharply disappointing. Glass production still went on in Firozabad but was primarily industrial units mass-producing standard tumblers or light bulbs, automobile glass, and scientific beakers and pipettes. (Interestingly, the sixth century BC medical treatise Susrata Samhita mentions medical instruments made of glass!)
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