Marble Double Bust Statue of Parents on One Plinth, 22 in

Two portraits, one block of stone

Most memorial busts answer for one person. This one answers for two. The mother and father are carved side by side from a single block of Makrana white marble and rise from one continuous plinth, shoulders almost touching, each turned a few degrees toward the other. Nothing is joined, pinned or glued — both figures and the base they stand on come out of the same stone, which is why the piece reads as a couple rather than as two objects that happen to share a shelf.

That choice asks more of the sculptor. A double portrait needs a block roughly 26 inches across, and two likenesses have to land at once: if one face is right and the other is not, the piece has failed. It is also why families tend to order the pair together rather than adding a second bust years later — matching an existing bust in a different block, cut by a different hand, rarely comes off.

Worked from your photographs, in clay first

Send pictures of both of them — front on, both three-quarter angles, a profile, and one candid shot each that catches how they actually held their heads. Four or five per person is enough. The sculptors we work with build both likenesses in clay at full size before any stone is opened, then send back photographs of the clay from those same angles. You look, and you say what is wrong: the set of the mouth, the weight of the jaw, how far the pallu comes forward. A correction in clay costs nothing. A correction in marble is not a correction at all — it is a second block.

Carving starts only once you have signed off on both clay heads. We design the piece with you, brief the sculptor, and follow it through to delivery at your door, with progress pictures at the roughing and finishing stages.

Makrana white, honed rather than polished

Makrana is the marble of the Taj Mahal and of most of Rajasthan''s older memorial carving — compact, fine-grained and brilliant white, with faint grey hairline veins and the slightest warm undertone. It takes an eyelid, a lip edge and a nostril without crumbling, which is the whole reason portrait work goes to it.

This piece is finished honed rather than mirror-polished. A high gloss throws hard highlights across a face and flattens the modelling; a honed surface stays matte, keeps the detail readable in ordinary daylight, and shows fingerprints far less. Hand-painting in natural skin tones is available instead if you would rather have colour — say so at the brief stage, because the surface is prepared differently for paint.

Size, weight and where it sits

In this configuration the piece stands 22 inches tall, about 26 inches across and 12 inches deep, and weighs in the region of 95 kg with its plinth. That is a four-person lift, and it needs a masonry ledge, a solid console or a plinth of its own — not a light side table.

An entrance hall, a study, a landing or a dedicated remembrance corner all suit it. By long custom in Hindu households a portrait of the departed is kept apart from the pooja room rather than placed among the deities, and a garland laid at the base on anniversaries is the usual way it is honoured.

Sizes from 15 inches up to life size are made to order, in Makrana white, Vietnam white or black stone. A commissioned portrait bust takes eight to twelve weeks from the day the clay is approved, depending on how much detail the attire carries. Send us your photographs on WhatsApp and we will come back with a quotation.