Vietnam White Marble Jali Tissue Box Cover, 6in

A jali screen at tissue-box scale

This tissue box cover is worked the way a jali screen is: all four upright faces are pierced right through, edge to edge, in a repeating star-and-hexagon geometry drawn from the perforated marble screens of Mughal and Rajasthani architecture — the kind set into jharokha windows and sanctuary walls so that air and light pass while the eye is held. At six inches the geometry has to shrink with the object. Each opening is drilled and then filed true by hand, leaving webs of stone only a few millimetres across, and the corner posts and the moulded lip at the top are left solid so the lattice has a frame to hang from. Tissues pull through the rectangular slot in the lid, and the whole cover lifts off a standard boutique-size box.

The stone

Vietnam White Marble comes out of the quarries around Thanh Hoa province in northern Vietnam, and it reads as a cool, near-neutral white — cleaner and less creamy than Makrana, without the blue-grey cast of Carrara. On a pierced piece the grain matters more than the colour. Vietnam white is fine and compact, its veining hairline-thin and sparse, so a chisel travelling along a three-millimetre web is not about to meet a soft vein and lose the strut. The faces are taken to a soft satin polish rather than a mirror one, and on a lattice that is a deliberate choice: a high-gloss surface throws light straight back and flattens the pattern, while satin lets each opening read as its own small pocket of shadow.

Where it sits

A tissue box cover is one of the few things on a table nobody thinks to put away, which is a fair argument for making it out of stone. On a living-room console or a low coffee table this one sits at just under two kilos, heavy enough to stay put when a tissue is pulled. In a guest bathroom it does what marble has always done well near water — takes the damp without swelling or staining — and a wipe with a soft damp cloth is the whole of the cleaning routine; skip anything acidic, since lemon and vinegar sprays etch marble over time. Set it near a lamp or a window and the lattice throws its own pattern onto the wall behind. It also boxes easily, which is why a piece like this travels well as a house-warming or wedding gift.

Making it yours

Everything here is made to order, so the cover can be cut to a tissue box you already own — the upright boutique carton is the default, but the flat rectangular one comes up often enough that it is worth measuring yours before you send the details across. The lattice is open to change too: a coarser geometry reads bolder from across a room, a finer one asks more time at the drill and is priced accordingly, and one face can be left as a solid panel if you want somewhere to carve initials or a date for a gift. Makrana white is the usual alternative stone. Send us the measurements and where the piece is going, and we will put a drawing and a price in front of you before anything is cut.