Old Indian Ivory and Silver pendant. The ivory form itself, very finely hand-carved, hollowed out and dyed in the traditional method of prolonged immersion in a tea solution, would have been handcut in the early 1900s, and had seen a fair amount of wear, as evidenced by a few visible knocks and nicks, themselves worn smooth with wear, before its present creation as a container pendant; the handcrafted Silver cappings and screw top were fashioned in the old market place of Chandni Chowk in Delhi in the early 1970s.

Ivory in India has a long tradition in jewellery and in all sorts of ornamentation. The elephant is a sacred animal in India, treasured and revered, worshipped as the god Ganesha, and valued for its great strength; it has never been killed in India for its ivory. All old ivory in India has its source in elephants that died natural deaths, or in palace elephants which had had their tusks polled for safety reasons.