NAVINA HAIDAR: The Mughal rulers of India were great lovers of precious materials, and their patronage of the jeweled arts is one of the great features… of Mughal art. Here in this case, you're looking at works of art that were made in a very rare and precious material, which is jade, nephrite jade. …Mughal craftsmen fashioned this incredibly hard material into works of art for a variety of uses, from dagger hilts, which were worn not only as weapons but also as part of personal adornment and costumes… but also little bowls, an mirror handles and many, many other courtly objects. The daggers… were of course worn as part of courtly costume.You often see in Mughal painting nobles wearing these in their belts. And these were given out often as royal gifts… to acknowledge the importance of a particular person at court. Nephrite jade actually comes in a variety of shades, from pale white all the way to dark green, and the Mughals were fond of the whole range of nephrite. A lot of scholarship has been done and is continuing to be done on understanding how the craftsmen were able to take this incredibly hard material and turn it into the incredibly sensitive studies of animals and plants that you see in Mughal jade carving.

NARRATOR: If you haven’t already heard about the depiction of nature in Indian art, press PLAY.