Custom Made Marble Handicraft & Decor Items

What is in the marble handicraft collection

This collection is everything carved in stone that is neither a deity nor a shrine. Urli bowls, tulsi planters, jali lanterns, serving trays, lamps, candle and incense holders, wall plaques and urns — alongside the pieces that do daily work, like a chakla and belan, a mortar and pestle, coasters, a desk set, a jewellery box or a bath set. They are made to order by the master sculptors we work with, in Makrana white marble, Vietnam white marble, black stone, Dholpur pink sandstone or cast marble dust, at sizes you specify. They run from about 4 inches, for a coaster, up to a 36-inch tulsi planter that stands on a veranda floor.

This is also the collection that takes bulk orders. Corporate gifting, wedding return gifts and hospitality fit-outs are all ordinary here, and quantity changes the arithmetic in your favour — a run of fifty identical pieces is quoted differently from a single one. If that is what you need, say so at the start rather than after.

Decoration, utility, or both

A statue has one job. Most of this collection has two, and it is worth deciding which one matters more to you before you choose a piece, because it changes the stone, the finish and the price.

Some pieces are purely to be looked at — the tulsi vrindavan planter, the lotus-petal urli, a wall plaque, the pierced jali lantern that throws its own pattern across the wall once a tealight is lit inside it.

Others earn their place by being used. A chakla and belan rolls out chapatis and then stands on edge showing its carved underside. A mortar and pestle grinds masala. A bath set holds soap. A desk set holds pens and cards.

And a third group sits in the pooja room and does ritual work — the thali set with its panchpatra, achmani and diya, or the chowki a murti is seated on. If you are buying a statue elsewhere on this site, the chowki is the piece that usually goes with it.

Which stone does which job

Stone choice here is not only about colour, and this is the collection where it matters most, because several of these pieces get handled every day.

Black stone is the right answer for anything that meets food or oil. A khalbatta in black granite does not take up turmeric or masala oils the way a porous stone would, which is why the traditional Indian kitchen mortar has always been cut from dark stone rather than marble. The same density is useful on a desk set or coasters, where marks and ring stains show far less.

White marble is the right answer in the pooja room. A thali, a diya, a chowki — these read as clean and are meant to, and Makrana takes the fine relief that a lotus seat or a petal-carved rim needs. Vietnam white is the cooler, more porcelain-toned of the two whites, which is why it suits a bathroom set better than a shrine.

Pierced jali work has a constraint of its own. Cutting a lattice all the way through leaves very thin sections of stone, so it needs a dense, even-grained block with no veins running through the cut lines. That is the real reason the lantern, the tissue cover and the tulsi planter are offered in the two white marbles and not in every stone on the list.

Inlay work — parchin kari

Several pieces here carry inlay, and it is worth being clear about what that means, because the word gets used loosely. This is not painting or transfer work. Semi-precious stone is cut to shape — lapis for the blues, malachite for the greens, carnelian and jasper for the reds — and each piece is set into a cavity chiselled into the marble to receive it, then ground flush and polished. Run a finger across a finished lid and you feel one continuous surface.

It is the Mughal technique that covers the Taj Mahal, kept alive in workshops across Agra and Rajasthan, and it is slow: a single flowering stem on a jewellery box lid can be dozens of separately cut fragments. Because the pattern is stone rather than pigment, it does not fade, scratch off or lift with cleaning — which is what makes it sensible on things that get used, like the coaster set or the border of a pooja thali.

If you want inlay on a piece that is shown here plain, ask. Most shapes will take it, and the cost follows the number of fragments rather than the size of the object.

Commissioning a handicraft piece

Nothing here is a fixed range, and this is the collection where a completely new idea is most common. A shape you sketched, a piece you saw and photographed, a tray sized to a particular table, a set of elephants in a stone shown here on something else — all ordinary. Marble takes carving, piercing, inlay and enamel work, so the constraint is usually the size of the block and the fragility of the design rather than the design itself, and we will tell you plainly if something will not survive daily handling.

On timing, ask before you assume. Some pieces already exist — either stock we hold or work the sculptors we work with have already finished — and where that is the case there is no carving wait at all, and we will send you photographs of the actual piece. A fresh commission in this collection usually takes four to eight weeks, depending on how much carving, piercing and inlay the design calls for; a plain bowl is quick, a fully pierced jali lantern is not. Tell us the date you are working towards and we will tell you which of the two you are looking at.

How this differs from the other collections

Three collections divide everything by what the object is. Handicraft and decor — this page — is the non-devotional stone work. Marble statues are the figures: deities, saints, named forms. Marble temples are the mandir structures a murti sits inside.

The line is not always obvious. A Ganesha pen stand or a low-relief plaque carries a deity but functions as an object, so it lives here rather than with the statues. If you are unsure which collection holds what you want, the themed collections page groups by occasion instead — griha pravesh gifts, pooja-room pieces — which is often the easier way in when you are shopping for a moment rather than for a thing.

For a single piece, message us on WhatsApp with a photograph or a sketch and the rough dimensions. For a bulk order, include the quantity and the date you need them by, and the quote comes back with both. Either way the design is agreed before any stone is cut, and the finished work is delivered to your door.