A jewelled bird

Birds were closely associated with kingship at the Mughal court and in the successor states of Hyderabad and Awadh. These associations have deep cultural roots that pre-date Islam, where birds, along with other winged beings like angels and the legendary simurgh, featured prominently in traditional imagery of rule. This imagery was often used to decorate palaces and imperial architecture and may have alluded to the idea of the ruler being assisted by divine beings such as angels.Although accounts of Shah Jahan’s legendary Peacock Throne vary, in paintings it was identified by its ornamentation of two jeweled and enameled peacocks on top of the canopy, with spinels suspended from their beaks. Following the imperial model, the later ruler Tipu Sultan of Mysore constructed a throne with a huma bird over the canopy. 

The parrot shown here is a rare survival of these symbols of royalty. This bird is said to be part of a group that once belonged to the Nizams of Hyderabad and sat around the throne during durbar ceremonies. With its virtuoso combination of cut precious diamonds, rubies, and emeralds, shimmering green enameling, and the kundan technique of using extraordinarily thin purified gold under pressure to set hardstones without the use of heat, this is a masterpiece of the jeweled arts of the Indian courts.

Encrusted gold birds were considered significant royal gifts, with the emperor Jahangir (r. AH 1014–37/1605–27 CE) mentioning in his Memoirs that he was given a jeweled bird in AH 1021/1612–13 CE. Such pieces survived in Indian royal collections into the last century and made a great impression on those who saw them. Rosita Forbes, visiting the Maharaja of Jaipur during her travels in India, described “a golden bird, studded with rubies [that] stood about sixteen inches high and was so heavy I could not lift it off the mantelpiece. Never had I seen anything so red. The stones burned with a fierce crimson light.”