Handcrafted Vietnam White Marble Lakshmi-Ganesh Pair on Carved Chowki with Temple Backrest, 36in

Vietnam white marble reads a full tone cooler than the Makrana stone most Indian murtis are carved from — a clean, neutral, near-porcelain white with a fine crystalline grain and only hairline grey veining. The block for this 36-inch Lakshmi-Ganesh pair comes from the Thanh Hoa quarries in northern Vietnam, the source that has supplied India's statue workshops since the early 2000s. On a piece this size the evenness of the stone matters: there is no warm cast fighting the brass and flame of a working temple room, and the carved backrest panel stays visually quiet behind the two figures. Carving begins with a rough cut that establishes the chowki, the seated forms and the backrest as one connected mass, so the finished work reads as a single altar object rather than two statues sharing a shelf. Independent master sculptors in Jaipur — the workshops TMW has commissioned for years — take it from primary shape to detail work by hand. Faces, palms, the trunk, the jewellery courses and the drapery folds are never machine-finished; they are chiselled, rasped and hand-polished in stages until the satin sheen comes up evenly across the flat panel and the deep undercuts alike. Lakshmi sits at Ganesh's right, the placement the Diwali pooja tradition asks for, both in Padmasana on the shared plinth. Her upper hands hold lotuses; the lower two are open in abhaya and varada, the gestures of reassurance and of giving. Ganesh holds his bowl of modak in the lower left hand with the trunk curving toward it — the vamamukhi form kept for household worship. The arched panel rising behind them follows the prabhavali convention, the carved aureole that frames a consecrated murti in temple installations, worked here in scrollwork with a pillared border at either side. At 36 inches the pair is an installation rather than a shelf piece. Allow a plinth or chabutra that brings the deities' eyes near the standing sightline of whoever performs aarti, and roughly five feet of clear wall behind so the backrest panel has room to read. The elephant-carved chowki legs lift the whole mass off the floor, which is what devotional practice expects and which keeps the base clear for lamps, thali and flowers. Weight runs close to 43 kg, so a masonry or stone platform serves better than furniture. The same composition can be commissioned in Makrana white, in black marble, or with the backrest panel simplified for a smaller alcove, at heights above and below this one. A family name or an installation date can be engraved along the chowki edge. Message us on WhatsApp to talk through the stone and the scale.