CANDLE HOLDER 1

Dimensions: Height 52 cm Wide 25 cm Depth 25 cm
Weight: 2292 grams

CANDLE HOLDER 2

Dimensions: Height 52 cm Wide 25 cm Depth 25 cm
Weight: 2232 grams

OFFERING VESEL

Dimensions: Height 62 cm Wide 45 cm Depth 35 cm
Weight: 4788 grams

Comprising a lidded censer on three legs and a pair of tall ritual lamps, each finely repoussé-worked in silver with dense scrolls of lotus and foliate designs. The surfaces are lavishly inset with coral and turquoise cabochons, while the censer is further embellished with jade plaques, including one carved and pierced with a deer among foliage. The lamps rise on stepped lotus bases with wide offering bowls and tall central spires for butter lamps or ritual flames.

The repoussé work is of fine quality, the decoration crisp and deeply chased, enriched by the vibrant contrast of turquoise and coral, traditional auspicious stones in Tibetan Buddhist ritual art.

This type of altar garniture would have been used in monasteries or wealthy household shrines, symbolizing purity, offering, and spiritual illumination. The use of silver and semiprecious stones marks this as a luxury commission. Comparable gem-set ritual implements are preserved in the Potala Palace, Lhasa, and examples have appeared in major auctions at Christie’s and Bonhams.

The present ensemble, with its impressive scale, intact set of censer and lamps, and the rare inclusion of jade inlays, represents a remarkable and important survival of 19th-century ritual silverwork.