A YAK HORN-SHAPED COPPER AND BRASS HUQQA BASE
Skardo, Gilgit-Baltistan, Upper Indus Valley, Northern Pakistan, 19th century

With a curved and faceted cylindrical copper body, the overall design imitating the shape of a yak horn, embellished with overlaid openwork brass plaques decorated with meandering stylised palmettes and vegetal scrolls, the body plain, with a cylindrical spout with reinforced rim to the side, 17.8cm high.

Quite unusual in their shape and design, yak horn-shaped huqqa bases such as ours started attracting the attention of Western visitors travelling through Kashmir and the Punjab hills in the 19th century. The first published source in which they are mentioned is the travelling account of Count and Countess de Ujfalvy, who travelled in those areas in 1881 (the same year as Purdon-Clarke). They acquired one of these huqqas in Skardo (specific location remains unknown) and mentioned that there were several others, of lesser quality.

Mark Zebrowski suggests that the earliest huqqas from Baltistan were indeed made of genuine yak's horns, and shifted to the metal medium at a later stage, possibly around the 18th century. The decorative vocabulary of these water pipe is mostly based on marshes and water plants, reflecting the long-lasting impact of Indian culture upon these distant borderlands of Central Asia (Mark Zebrowkski, Gold, Silver and Bronze from Mughal India, London, 1997, pp. 243 - 245).

Yak horn-shaped huqqas from Baltistan have been previously offered at auction with very successful results. Please see for reference Christie's South Kensington, 8 April 2011, lot 330 and 331; and Bonhams, 5 November 2014, lot 248.