The thank-you gift was meant to be a gold vase but the whip-round did not quite raise sufficient funds, so the future Duke of Wellington had to make do instead with an elephant-themed silver gilt dinner service.

As visitors will see for the first time this weekend, it is not too much of a snub. The magnificent and unusual Deccan dinner service has been laid out on a dining table at Wellington’s London home, Apsley House, as part of an exhibition exploring a comparatively overlooked part of his life – his eight years as a young soldier in India.

It is going on public display for the first time and is something of a showstopper. “We use this service quite often,” admitted the current Duke of Wellington, pointing to scratches on one of the plates. “They have clearly been used quite a lot.”

The dinner service was a gift from officers under Arthur Wellesley’s command in the Deccan region of India.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Josephine Oxley, keeper of the Wellington Collection, with one of the swords used by the young Arthur Wellesley in India. Photograph: Simon Ford/REX/Shutterstock

A letter has been found in which the officers talked about giving Wellesley a gold vase. “The takings fell a bit short so he had to settle for a silver gilt dinner service instead,” said Josephine Oxley, keeper of the Wellington Collection.

Wellesley was 27 and a colonel in the British army when in 1796 he received his orders to sail to India.

He saw it as a huge opportunity and a highlight of the show will be books that were part of a travelling library Wellesley assembled to educate himself about India. An original handwritten list of about 200 volumes reveals a reading list heavy on history, philosophy, economics and language.

His light reading was Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, volumes of which the current duke helped find at Stratfield Saye, Wellington’s Hampshire estate. “We had great fun one day looking through the library trying to find these books. I was very pleasantly surprised to find the Swift. They went all the way to india, round India and all the way back to the library where they remain. That did rather amaze me,” he said.

Wellesley was involved in the defeat of Tipu Sultan of Mysore at Seringapatam in 1799 and there will be artefacts shining light on that campaign. Tipu relics, including drawings, an embroidered jacket and hat were returned to India in the 1950s in exchange for family paintings.

The exhibition will make the case of how important India was in the making of Wellington as one of the greatest military commanders in British history, whose most notable victory was the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815.

“India made his name and he learned a lot, the importance of the supply chain and getting on well with the local population,” said the current duke. “All this led to his successes in the Peninsular war.”

He hoped the show would encourage more visitors to a house packed full of wonders – including paintings by Velázquez and Rubens – but was quite often quiet, despite its spectacular location on Hyde Park Corner: “On the whole this is still a rather under-visited house, even though it is right in the centre of London and open five days a week … the visitor numbers are surprisingly low.”

Many thousands of people walk past the English Heritage property every day blissfully unaware of what is inside. “We often don’t visit the places in our own home town,” said the duke. “I know plenty of people in Madrid who probably haven’t been to the Prado as often as I have. It is just the way it is.”

• Young Wellington in India is at Apsley House until 3 November