Indian Vessel with Ring Handles and Avian Motif

A copper belly this round rarely goes unremarked.

From Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, in South India, comes this vessel with ring handles and avian motif, made in the late 19th century of copper. Families and cooks in India relied on large copper pots of this sort to store water and to prepare food for big gatherings. Fine hammer marks cover a warm, reddish surface, darkening toward the shoulder. A wide, flat rim carries a band of scale-like pattern, and rings hang from small bird-headed lugs at either side. Twenty-two and a half inches high and twenty-two in diameter.

Its proportions seem to have been settled long ago, and correctly.