A FISH-SHAPED SILVER GILT PROCESSIONAL STANDARD FINIAL ('ALAM) Lucknow, North India, 18th century  Zoomorphically shaped as a fish, the body gilt and the eye set with green beads, the central ringed silver pole of cylindrical shape, the top of the 'alam with a crescent ending in two gilt globes, mounted on a green velvet stand, 62cm high including the stand.  The design of this 'alam links it to the 18th-century Lucknow production and to one of its quintessential decorative motifs, the fish. As Markel explains, the fish emblem represents an idiosyncratic Lucknow artistic rendition of the Mughal insignia of exalted rank, known as the mahi-ye maratib (Fish of Dignity). The fish insignia has a long heritage in pre-Islamic and Islamic cultures in the Middle East and South Asia, but it acquired special prominence during the Mughals, as several emperors' portraits of the 17th and 18th century showcase. The mahi-ye maratib was usually represented in physical form as a golden or gilt fish with two gilt or steel globes. Borne on individual standards, finials such as ours would have been displayed at royal functions and carried in royal processions to showcase the awarding of a noble or high rank military commander (Stephen Markel, India's Fabled City: The Art of Courtly Lucknow, Los Angeles, 2010, pp. 212 - 213). For an example of how this 'alam would have looked in real life, please see the upper right corner procession in the MET painting The Emperor Aurangzeb Carried on a Palanquin, ca. 1705 - 20 (inv. no. 2003.430).