Marble Coaster & Diya Wedding Favour Box Set, 6in

What arrives in the box

A rigid covered box, lined in cream, with each piece seated in its own die-cut recess: two round Makrana white marble coasters and one shallow lotus-shaped diya with a thin brass rim. The lid lifts clear so the set reads as a gift the moment it is opened, which is rather the point — a wedding favour is handed over in front of people, and the presentation is doing as much work as the marble. The coasters sit flat at about three and a half inches across, thick enough to feel solid under a glass without being awkward to stack. The diya takes a single wick and a spoon of ghee or oil. Nothing here needs wrapping, ribbon or a printed card to look finished; the box is part of the object, not packaging that gets abandoned at the door.

The floral inlay

The coasters carry parchin kari — the stone-inlay craft that arrived in Agra with the Mughal ateliers and settled permanently in Jaipur. Carnelian red, malachite green and lapis blue are cut to shape by hand, then set flush into channels chiselled into the marble face, so the flowering stem is stone set in stone rather than paint laid on a surface. Run a thumb across a finished coaster and the pattern sits level with the marble around it. Each stem goes in petal by petal, which is why an inlaid piece is slower work than a plain one, and why no two coasters in a batch are ever quite identical in their leaf spacing. The lotus diya is left plain by contrast: petals cut in relief, edged with a narrow brass band that catches lamplight.

Makrana marble at favour scale

Makrana comes out of the Nagaur district of Rajasthan and has been quarried there for centuries — it is the marble of the Taj Mahal, and the reason Jaipur's inlay trade grew up around it. Its grain is fine, compact and lightly crystalline, which matters more at this size than at monument scale: a small piece has nowhere to hide a coarse crystal or a soft patch, and a shallow inlay channel cut into loose stone will chip along its edge. Makrana holds a crisp channel and takes the soft satin polish these pieces are finished to, reading bright natural white with the faintest warm cast and the odd grey hairline vein. A complete set weighs around a kilogram — light enough to hand across a table, solid enough to survive being posted.

Giving it, and changing it

Guest favours are ordered in numbers, so this set is designed to repeat: the same motif, the same box, across fifty or five hundred. Most couples send the coasters and the diya together and let the household split them — the coasters end up on a desk, the diya comes out at Diwali. Each set is made to order against your brief, which is where the flexibility sits. The inlay palette can narrow to a single colour family to match a wedding card; the coaster count per box can go to four or six; the lid or the coaster undersides can carry engraved names and a date. Black granite is the other stone this set is made in, and it reads very differently against a white tablecloth. Send the quantity, the palette and any engraving you want, and we will quote the set.