A rare late 19^th century Anglo – Indian unmarked silver cigarette case, Poona circa 1890, attributed to Heerappa Boochena

Raj period. Of rectangular form with rounded corners, push button release. The lid with an embossed hunting scene of a caparisoned elephant with a rider and two men in a houdah, one with a gun and the other a spear, all before a tiger set within a landscape. The reverse with chased Cutch type foliate scrolls centred with a shaped vacant cartouche. The interior with two affixed silver retaining straps.

Length – 8.9 cm / 3.50 inches

Weight – 115 grams / 3.7 ozt

The work of Heerappa Boochena, who is believed to have hailed from or trained in Lucknow, is evidently the main craftsman to have practiced in Poona. A dated example of a presentation twin handled cup of 1883, demonstrates the finely embossed figural scenes combined with Cutch type workmanship, this piece bears his applied maker’s boss, sold Dreweatts, 7 July 2021, lot 139 (£3,250 incl. prem). Also a bowl with a hunting scene, similarly worked, sold Toovey’s 9 Aug 2017, lot 340 (£3000 hammer).

The design on this cigarette case is almost certainly drawn from “Our Tiger Shooting” (1859) Captain George Francklin Atkinson (1822-1859), "Curry & Rice" on forty plates; or, the ingredients of social life at "our station" in India, London: Day & Son, Ltd. This popular album of prints after originals by Francklin Atkinson, a captain in the Bengal Engineers, satirises the British officials and locals of a fictitious village in India through text and forty illustrations. This print showing Francklin Atkinson himself shooting at the tiger from the elephants houdah.