Makrana Marble Cupped Hands Vessel with Wooden Bowl, 14in

A gesture, reduced

Two hands rise from a plain base and cup a small turned bowl between them. They are stripped back a long way from anatomy — no nails, no knuckles, no wrists, just the planes and the soft edges that carry the gesture. Reduced that far, the piece reads as form first and as hands second, which is what keeps it from tipping into sentimentality. It is 14 inches across and about 8 inches tall.

Marble against wood

The hands are Makrana white marble, worked to a soft polish so the light travels around the curves without a hard highlight. The bowl is turned from a warm mid-brown hardwood and simply sits in the cradle, so it lifts out. The pairing does most of the work: cool against warm, hard against soft, and one small area of grain to break up a large area of white. The wood is an accent — this is a stone piece with a wooden element in it, not a mixed-material object.

Where it sits

An entryway console, a dressing table, a desk. The bowl is a real one and takes keys, rings, or a watch at the end of the day, which is what stops the piece being purely decorative. On a hall table it tends to become the thing everyone puts things into.

Making yours

Scale, how open the hands sit and the bowl material are all open — brass instead of wood reads considerably more formal. It is carved for you by the master sculptors we work with in Jaipur, with the bowl turned separately and fitted at the end. Allow four to eight weeks.