INDIA, 17TH CENTURY

The construction of the shirt is identical to one in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2000.595), attributed to India circa 1650, although that shirt is in notably worse condition and lacks the copper alloy decorative borders that make the ours so distinctive. These shirts form part of a loose group of mail shirts with steel plates arranged in this manner, some of were part of the booty taken from the Bijapur armoury at Adoni, seized in 1689, and are inscribed with the name of Anup Singh, Maharaja of Bikaner (r.1669-98). Other examples are in the Nasser D. Khalili Collection (MTW 1155; David Alexander, The Arts of War, 1992, pp.160-2, fig.100), and sold at Christie’s South Kensington, 8 April 2011, lot 432, and Sotheby’s London, 16 October 2002, lot 64.