Makrana White Marble Lalbaugcha Raja with 22k Gold-Leaf Ornaments, 24 in

Carved from Makrana white marble quarried in Nagaur district, Rajasthan — the same stone the Taj Mahal was faced with — this 24-inch Lalbaugcha Raja keeps a plain, bright white body so that the gilding has something quiet to sit against. Makrana is dense and fine-crystalline, with a faint cream undertone and grey hairline veins no wider than a pencil line, and it holds a satin polish that reads warm rather than glassy. The contrast is deliberate: the crown, waist belt, armlets and layered necklaces are finished in 22k gold leaf, so the regalia catches the light while the stone stays still behind it. Work begins with a single block, rough-cut to the seated proportion before the throne and its two flanking lions are blocked out on either side. TMW commissions each piece from independent master sculptors in Jaipur, and the faces — Ganpati's and both lions' — are chiselled and hand-finished throughout, never machine-dressed. Once progressive wet polishing brings the body to a satin sheen, the gilder lays 22k gold leaf over the mukut, the jewellery and the belt panel, burnishing each sheet down into the carved relief so the ornament reads as metal rather than paint. Lalbaugcha Raja is the Ganpati of the Lalbaug mandal in Mumbai, installed every Ganeshotsav since 1934 and known to devotees as Navasacha Ganpati — the one who keeps a vow. Its signature is the simhasan: a throne flanked by carved lions, which is what separates this form from Pune's Dagdusheth murti on its lotus and jewelled seat. The four arms carry the ankush and the pash above, a modak below, and the fourth raised in abhaya. The trunk curls to his left, the right tusk is broken, and the mushak waits at the plinth. At 24 inches tall on a 17-inch throne base, the murti works as the single focus of a home mandir shelf or a pooja-room niche. Allow roughly 24 inches of clear width so the lions are not crowded, and a shelf or platform rated for about 62 kg. Warm recessed cove light or a low-angle strip does the most for gold leaf; flat overhead lighting flattens the burnish and loses the relief. Many families keep a piece this size in the mandir year-round and bring it forward for sthapana at Ganesh Chaturthi. The same form can be commissioned at other heights, with gilding limited to the mukut alone, or carried further into full festival polychrome. Message us on WhatsApp with your shelf dimensions and we will advise on scale and the gold-leaf coverage that suits the light in your mandir.