Base for a water pipe (hookah)

Various historical documents reveal that large amounts of European glassware were imported into India from the sixteenth through the nineteenth century, although little survives. That water pipe bases were among those items indicates the enormous popularity of tobacco smoking within a century of its introduction to South Asia by the Portuguese. A high lead content and rib design place this water pipe base in the late seventeenth century, shortly after English glassmakers had perfected the process for producing the crystal-like glass.