In a lyrical painting by the master Nainsukh, set in rolling mustard fields abloom in yellow, an aesthete Mian is on horseback with his gorgeous lady in red. The painting is spectacular because in the 18th century, with electronic speakers still in the future, two musicians accompany them, singing and drumming, while another bearer walks alongside holding a decorated glass hubble-bubble that the gentleman redolently smokes. I have seen so many Indian paintings with huqqa bearers, but never thought much of them till I saw the luxurious gilded green glass base that adorns the cover of Mughal Glass – A History of Glassmaking in India .
The ‘hubble-bubble’ is an onomatopoeic name for huqqas , the smoking apparatus that was floor or table set and one of the many Mughal pleasure pursuits. Its component parts — typically a globular or bell-shaped base, a tobacco holder and a mouthpiece — were fashioned from precious stones, metals and sometimes glass. Demerits of smoking apart, if anything, a huqqa always slowed the pace of a painting.
Its presence meant leisure, refinement and a cadence of a time gone by. Mughal Glass – A History of Glassmaking in India book cover Tara Desjardins Born of heat, used as luxury The book by Tara Desjardins, curator of South Asia at Doha’s Museum of Islamic Art, presents as a catalogue the niche oeuvre of glass associated with the Mughal Empire (1526-1858) — easily some of the most beautiful objects made anywhere in time. Glass as a mate.
