Art form · from the 15th c.

Bidriware

بدری

Blackened zinc alloy inlaid with silver — a craft named for the town that made it, and still made there.

Draft. This entry is an unreviewed first draft. It has not yet been checked by a subject reviewer — see sources and method.

Black ground, silver line

The technique casts an object in a zinc-copper alloy, chases the design, inlays silver wire or sheet, then blackens the ground with a paste made from soil — traditionally soil from Bidar fort itself. The contrast is the point: matt black against bright silver.

Hookah bases, ewers, boxes and dishes are the classic forms. The vocabulary of ornament is Persianate — poppies, vine scrolls, geometric fields.

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