325 Old Silver Peacock Surma Box – Kohl container ornament

Peacock Shaped Box for “Surma” – a type of powder Kohl (eyeliner)

The head of the peacock can be unscrewed and the stick attached to the head is used to apply the surma to the eyes.

Surma and surma daanis (simple ones) were essential items in every Muslim woman’s make-up kit in the previous centuries and remained popular until the 1960s.

Surma is one of the 16 adornments that a woman practices to entice and lure her husband to romatic tete-a-tetes. [naturally, that era was a very different one compared to ours]

Most were common functional boxes while a few such as this one were made artistically.

Mid 1960s

Awadh or North India