A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c16.s8.6

c16.s8.6

The productions of Travancore and Mysore are adjudged by Sir George Watt to hold 'the very foremost position among the ivories of India'—an honour partly due to the excellence of the material used, but mainly the result of the fine artistic quality of the designs and execution, which have been sufficiently illustrated by the similar examples of sandalwood carving discussed in Section 7 of this chapter. The motives of the patterns are closely related to those of the stone carvings on the temples of the Deccan, or so-called Chalukya style (*ante*, p. 45, Fig. 16), and are quite distinct from the grotesque extravagance of the Tamil *swāmi* designs. In Travancore the old conventional designs are still favoured, but the Mysore artists prefer the more modern 'jungle patterns'.