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Bracket with Lotus and Leaf Pattern

Asian Art

On View: Asian Galleries, Arts of South Asia, 2nd floor

These ornamental brackets, exemplary of eighteenth-century Guijarati wood carving, are from a rest house associated with a Jain temple. Pilgrims who came to worship in the temple used the rest house for social activities.

The Brooklyn Museum of Art's first Curator of Ethnology, Stewart Culin (1858–1929), purchased the rest house while traveling with Lockwood de Forest (1850–1932) of the Metropolitan Museum of Art on a Museum expedition to India in 1913–14. De Forest had established the Ahmedabad Wood Carving Company with Maganbhai Hutheesing in 1881 in response to the popularity of orientalist ornament in the Arts and Crafts Movement.

MEDIUM Carved wood and polychrome
  • Place Made: Gujarat, India
  • DIMENSIONS 73 in. (185.4 cm) mount: 73 × 5 1/2 × 20 in. (185.4 × 14 × 50.8 cm)
    COLLECTIONS Asian Art
    ACCESSION NUMBER 14.732.6
    PROVENANCE Ahmedabad, India; 1914, purchased from Purushottam Hutheesing of Ahmedabad, India by Stewart Culin for the Brooklyn Museum.
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    MUSEUM LOCATION This item is on view in Asian Galleries, Arts of South Asia, 2nd floor
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