page_title: Powder flask
section_title: Western tradition
hierarchical_section_title: Powder flask / Decoration / Western tradition
caption_attribution_description: English: The powder flask (also known as a priming flask) was an essential firearm accessory and held the fine powder needed to make the gun fire. Gunmakers in India during the Mughal era (1526-1858) specialized in carving ivory powder flasks with animal figures. Often, as these two examples, the decoration consists of intertwined and composite creatures that seem to grow out of or attack one another. One such menagerie, on the right-hand flask, includes a cheetah or lion chasing an antelope in the center, and bucks, antelopes, lions, birds, a boar, elephant, and mongoose at the two ends. Many of these animals were regularly hunted (or used for hunts, as with the elephant), in Mughal India.
context_page_description: A powder flask is a small container for gunpowder, which was an essential part of shooting equipment with muzzleloading guns, before pre-made paper cartridges became standard in the 19th century. They range from very elaborately decorated works of art to early forms of consumer packaging, and are widely collected. Many were standardized military issue, but the most decorative were generally used for sporting shooting.
  Although the term powder horn is sometimes used for any kind of powder flask, it is strictly a sub-category of flask made from a hollowed bovid horn. Powder flasks were made in a great variety of materials and shapes, though ferrous metals that were prone to give off sparks when hit were usually avoided. Stag antler, which could be carved or engraved, was an especially common material, but wood and copper were common, and in India, ivory. Apart from the horns, common shapes were the Y formed by the base of an antler, a usually flattened pear shape with a straight spout, a round flattened shape, and for larger flasks a triangle with concave rounded sides, which unlike the smaller flasks could be stood upright on a surface.
context_section_description: Germany, in antler and other materials, and India, in ivory and even jade, are the sources of especially richly decorated luxury flasks. A number of German flasks from the 16th and early 17th centuries are very richly carved with a wide variety of scenes, such as the emblematic figure illustrated. Antler was used for decorating a range of objects associated with hunting, from buttons to gunstocks, knife handles and saddles decorated all over with carved slices of antler. The uniforms of the guards of German princes might include elaborate flasks, often decorated with heraldic designs.
  By the 19th century, stamped metal flasks with a central design in low relief are more common, and standard types by particular manufacturers dominate the field, some produced by gun or powder manufacturers and carrying branding or advertising. The pear shape has become dominant for smaller flasks, which are presumably mostly kept in a pocket.
caption: Detail of the "composite animal" tip of an 18th-century ivory Indian flask
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