From tusks to teeth

Piercing eyes and fierceful jaws. A smirking angel. Anyone would be struck by the powerful sight of this object. Something almost scary to behold, but somehow appealing and fascinating. What are we even looking at?

This is a statue that was carved and modeled from ivory somewhere in South India during the sixteenth century. The same period of time saw the surge and splendor of the Mughal empire, founded by Babur, a descendant of legendary conquerors Timur and Genghis Khan.

In Mughal India, arts, architecture and crafting, as well as poetry, literature and law-systems flourished. It was an enormous and powerful empire that held the biggest economy in the world of the time. A pulsating center that promoted patronage of the arts and cultural integration, along with strong military power.

But not only that: factories and industries used a large number of artists and craftsmen that specialized in different fields. One of these was ivory carving. And in one of those factories, one or several anonymous artisans fabricated this piece which we can still appreciate today.

The crafting of ivory in its South Asian context, and subsequently its trading, demanded an accurate methodology and an understanding of the natural. This singha was not an outcome of random choices!

Before diving into the story, here you can read something about ivory. There’s not “one” kind of ivory, and both craftsmen and traders have been able to exploit its diversity and numerous subcategories. And as with many other materials and ‘wonders’ coming from the “East”, Western travelers, explorers and merchants had to deal with a deep-rooted tradition in order to acquire goods, techniques but also to demand new products.