This mother-of-pearl salva, a drinking bowl, was made in the second half of the sixteenth century in Gujarat, on the western coast of India, for the Portuguese market, and was further embellished in Europe with a silver rim.

The mother-of-pearl mosaic on the central dome-shaped boss features a stylised lotus flower, while the flat, slightly flared wide border complete its floral design with concentrically arranged pieces in the shape of polylobate petals; the upturned rim is made from wide rectangular pieces.

Known as salvas or salvers (from the Portuguese and Spanish salvar, ‘to save, taste food for one’s master’, from the Latin salvo, ‘to save’), that is, named after their function, such objects are recorded in early sixteenth-century Portuguese inventories as taças para salva, and were used at this time at princely and patrician tables for testing wine for poisons at the beginning of the meal and were afterwards placed on display in stepped cupboards or tables called copas or copeiras.[1]

Following the shape of the medieval European hanap (from the Frankish *hnapp, in turn from the Proto-Germanic *hnappaz, ‘cup’, ‘bowl’), these shallow circular drinking bowls feature a central dome-shaped boss, flared sides with upturned rims, and generally do not exceed the span of a palm in diameter (ca. 20-30 cm). Such shallow circular drinking bowls are in fact a natural development of the phiale mesonphalos from Antiquity—libation cups with a central omphalos used to better secure the vessel with just one hand, with the index and middle fingers placed on the underside of the boss while the thumb secures the rim.

Adapted to European taste following the arrival of the Portuguese on the western coast of India in the early sixteenth century, Gujarati mother-of-pearl works can be divided into two groups.[2] The first includes items either made entirely of mother-of-pearl plaques (mosaic) or applied over a wooden core. The second comprises wooden objects covered in dark mastic inset with finely cut mother-of-pearl pieces following complex geometric or floral patterns, and, more rarely, figurative and calligraphic designs. Objects produced using the first technique, sometimes combined with tortoiseshell, of which examples are known today, include pieces of furniture such as caskets, writing boxes, tabletops and reversible games boards, and other smaller household objects including large and medium-sized basins, salvers—such as the present example—dishes of every size, saucers, ewers, tankards, bottles, bowls, cups and other drinking vessels, salt cellars, flatware and spice boxes and other round boxes, and also arms such as daggers, powder flasks, and maces. Items made using the second technique include caskets, fall-front writing cabinets, pen cases, reversible games boards, and large basins. Both techniques, probably developed in the same production centres, use highly iridescent material, with shades of pink, green and blue, cut from the green turban shell (Turbo marmoratus), a marine gastropod which was once common in the Indian Ocean and reached the large sizes needed for the thick overlays on wood and double-walled construction of household items.

Gujarati mother-of-pearl vessels of this shape are exceedingly rare. Only one other example (Ø 29.0 cm), with minor differences in the more complex decoration of its dome-shaped central boss, is known; it belongs to a Portuguese private collection in Estoril-Lisbon.[3]

Although also featuring a dome-shaped central boss, a large basin (Ø 44.0 cm) with deep cavetto and wide flat border once in the princely collection (Kunstkammer) of Archduke Ferdinand II of Tyrol (r. 1564-1595) at Schloss Ambras in Innsbruck (inv. KK 4095), is modelled after a different prototype. Unlike salvas, basins were used at Portuguese princely, aristocratic, and patrician households for the ritual hand washing (called ‘água-às-mãos’) before and after meals.[4]

[1] See Hugo Miguel Crespo, “At the Prince’s Table: Dining at the Lisbon Court (1500-1700)”, in Hugo Miguel Crespo (ed.), At The Prince’s Table. Dining at the Lisbon Court (1500-1700). Silver, mother-of-pearl, rock crystal and porcelain, Lisbon, AR-PAB, 2018, pp. 50-114, on pp. 69-71.

[2] The classical works on the subject are by Simon Digby, “The mother-of-pearl overlaid furniture of Gujarat: the holdings of the Victoria and Albert Museum”, in Robert Skelton et al. (eds.), Facets of Indian Art, London, Victoria and Albert Museum, 1986, pp. 213-222; Bernardo Ferrão, Mobiliário Português. Dos Primórdios ao Maneirismo , vol. 3, Porto, Lello & Irmão Editores, 1990, pp. 114-122; José Jordão Felgueiras, “A Family of Precious Gujurati Works”, in Nuno Vassallo e Silva (ed.), The Heritage of Rauluchantim (cat.), Lisbon, Museu de São Roque - Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Lisboa - Comissão Nacional para as Comemorações dos Descobrimentos Portugueses, 1996, pp. 128-155; and Sigrid Sangl, “Indische Perlmutt-Raritäten und ihre europäischen Adaptationen”, Jarbuch des Kunsthistorischen Museums Wien 3 (2001), pp. 262-287. See also Hugo Miguel Crespo, India in Portugal. A Time of Artistic Confluence (cat.), Porto, Bluebook, 2021, pp. 26-58; and Idem, Gujarat & Portugal. Mother-of-pearl, Tortoiseshell and Exotic Woods, Lisbon, São Roque Antiguidades & Galeria de Arte, 2024, pp. 7-29.

[3] Helmut Trnek, Nuno Vassallo e Silva (eds.), Exotica. Os Descobrimentos Portugueses e as Câmaras de Maravilhas do Renascimento (cat.), Lisbon, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 2001, pp. 129-132, cat. 31 (catalogue entry by Pedro de Moura Carvalho).

[4] Idem, ibidem, p. 128, cat. 30 (catalogue entry by Sigrid Sangl).