A Dutch East Indies treen and brass tobacco bowl
For communal use, with baluster handle and moulded rim and foot
Condition: Old solder repair to the base of the brass handle.Old nibbling around the edge of the wood cover. Small old loss of wood to the upper rim of the bowl. Minor old shrinkage crack to the upper brass band of the rim. Other than this wear and tear consistent with age and use.
Note: E. H. Pinto, Treen & Other Wooden Bygones (1970), figure 355, for a similar bowl, described as 'a Dutch community table tobacco bowl', and in the accompanying text on p.342, as a 'very rare, Dutch, 18th century tobacco jar-bowl...hollowed out of a walnut root, handsomely mounted in brass.' Pinto notes that it 'may have been used for passing tobacco round the table at a guild or similar meeting...[or] it may have been used for conditioning tobacco leaves in various juices during the process of snuff making'. The illustrated bowl, like the bowl in this lot, has a 1 inch rebate around the rim, which allowed for its close-fitting lid to move up and down as it acted as a press.
Price: £1100
