Vedic Art Print – Shami, The Thorned Flowering Branch

Provenance

'Shami' is composed as a botanical plate: one thorned, flowering branch runs diagonally across a parchment-toned ground, with a flower, a flower spike, a pod, a seed, a leaf sprig and a branch section set around it. The Devanagari word 'शमी' is lettered below with a reference to the Atharvaveda, 6.11.1, from a hymn that speaks of the ashvattha growing upon the shami. The print lets the branch's diagonal carry the eye from the lower left to the upper right.

The branch is hung with fine paired leaflets and upright yellow flower spikes, and its stem is armed with sharp thorns. Long, slender pods hang at the lower right. At the edges, a single flower opens its filaments at upper left, a leaf sprig sits at upper right, a thorned stem section and an opened pod with brown seeds appear lower right, and a cross-section of the branch closes the lower corner.

Sage and blue-green foliage, butter-yellow blossom, umber wood and olive pods sit against ochre-cream parchment. Fine pen lines and delicate hatching describe each leaflet and thorn, and the faint mottling of the ground is visible in the image itself.