Makrana White Marble Pietra Dura Jewellery Box, 6in

The inlay on the lid

Pietra dura — known in Rajasthan and Agra as parchin kari — is the craft of setting cut semi-precious stone flush into a marble ground so the finished surface reads as one continuous plane. The technique arrived with the Mughal ateliers of the seventeenth century, and it is the same work that covers the cenotaph screens of the Taj Mahal, a few hours by road from Jaipur. On this six-inch lid the design is a floral vine: a central blossom in lapis lazuli blue, opening buds in carnelian red, and leaves and tendrils in malachite green, held inside a thin double border of lapis. Every petal and leaf is cut by hand on an emery wheel, the matching recess is chiselled into the marble to the same outline, and the piece is bedded and then ground back level. Nothing here is painted or printed — the colour is stone.

The marble it is cut from

Makrana white marble comes out of the quarries at Makrana in Nagaur district, Rajasthan, which have been worked for centuries and supplied the stone for the Taj Mahal. It is a bright natural white with a faint warm undertone, a compact crystalline grain, and occasional grey hairline veins that never widen past a pencil line — a quiet ground that lets the inlay colours carry the piece. The box is hollowed from a solid block rather than assembled from panels, so the walls, the fluted body and the bevelled base moulding are all one piece of stone; the lid is worked separately and seated on a hinge. The surface is taken to a soft satin polish — enough sheen to catch light along the mouldings, not so much that it mirrors the room and flattens the inlay. At roughly two kilograms it has the settled weight of solid marble.

Where a six-inch box sits

Six inches long and about four deep, this is a dressing-table piece — the size that holds a day of rings, a pair of earrings, a watch or a few small keepsakes without asking for a shelf of its own. It works equally well on a bedside table, a study desk, or a console beside the entrance, and the two-kilogram mass means it stays put when the lid is lifted. Marble takes a wipe with a soft damp cloth and nothing more; keep acidic cleaners, lemon and vinegar away from it, because they etch the polish over time. Because the inlay is stone set into stone rather than a surface decoration, the lid can be handled daily without wearing thin. As a wedding or house-warming gift it has the advantage of still being useful long after the occasion.

Making it yours

This is a made-to-order design, so it is not fixed at six inches or at this motif. We can work it out with you at eight or ten inches for a larger dressing table, change the palette — a green-and-mother-of-pearl reading, or an all-lapis geometric — or drop the inlay entirely for a plain carved lid with deeper fluting. A name or a date cut into the base moulding turns it into a wedding piece. Tell us what you have in mind, and it is cut and inlaid for you by the master artisan families we work with in Jaipur, then followed through to your door.