Ivory parallelepiped writing box of sliding cover, raised on four bracket feet, featuring four delicately carved elevations of elegant lobate cartouches interspersed with flowers – chrysanthemums, carnations and lotus. The lid decorative composition is defined by a sequence of Persian style niches.

Within the cartouches female and male cross-legged figures seated on the ground and holding small birds, flowers and wine cup, in a language of courtly erudition that illustrates the palatial pleasures favoured by the Deccan courts in central India.

Identical courtly imagery was also adopted for the sliding cover decoration, the female figures portrayed in saris, in the Hindustani fashion, and the male in turbans. This delicately carved ground is framed by double geometric border, ending in a spiral entwined floral frieze in the Persian taste. On the inner lid, hidden from preying eyes, a curious depiction of Shiva, the “Destroyer” god in the Hindu triad, portrayed as a sculptural idol, or murti, on a stepped stand as is common in related devotional imagery.

Most certainly a courtly object related to the act of writing, this box hides in its interior a religious figure whose devotion would be hampered in an essentially Islamic court, and one that evidences the cultural, religious and aesthetic synthesis between the Islamic Persian and the Southern Indian Hindu traditions. This symbiotic relationship illustrates a characteristic of both the Northern India Moghul culture and the Deccan Islamic courts in present day State of Maharashtra.