Animal Decor

The question nearly everyone arrives with, and the honest answer is shorter than the listicles make it. Four forms carry real weight in Indian households: the elephant, the cow with her calf, the tortoise and the horse. The peacock, swan and parrot are bought for the craft more than the meaning, which is a good enough reason on its own. Showpiece, figurine, sculpture, animal idol: in India the words are used interchangeably for the same object.

If you are choosing for a household you do not know well, the cow with her calf is the safe answer. It is domestic rather than devotional, so it asks nothing of the people receiving it: no puja, no place in the mandir, no assumption about which deity they keep. It sits as easily on a console as in a pooja room, and no tradition objects to it. It is also the piece we hold in the deepest quantity of anything we make, which tells you what people actually give.

Where each one goes, and how much of that is real

Placement advice for animal figures is convention rather than scripture, and it is worth knowing which is which before you rearrange a room around it.

Elephants go in pairs near the entrance, facing into the room rather than out at the street. The cow and calf is usually put in the north or north east, and it is equally at home in the living room or the pooja room. Horses belong where work happens, a study or a desk, since the association is with speed and progress. The tortoise draws more direction questions than everything else combined, and the instruction most often given for it, north facing and sat in water, turns out to be Chinese rather than Indian.

None of that comes from a text you can look up. Where an idea does have a source, we name the source.

Elephants

The form with the deepest attestation, and it runs through Indian art in three separate streams: Ganesha; Airavata, Indra's white elephant, named in the Bhagavad Gita; and Gaja Lakshmi, the goddess flanked by elephants, carved in stone at Bharhut around 125 to 100 BCE. In that iconography the elephants pour water over her, which connects them to rain, and through rain to abundance.

Ours are trunk up pairs and single figures, plus the Ambari elephant carrying the ceremonial howdah on its back, which is the most ornamented thing here and the one that reads as a centrepiece rather than a shelf object.

On the raised trunk: it is a much loved convention and we make plenty of them, but as far as we can find it has no basis in the classical Gaja Lakshmi iconography at all. It appears to be modern. That is not a reason to avoid it. It is a reason not to believe anyone who tells you the direction of a trunk is scripture.

Kamdhenu, the cow with her calf

Kamdhenu, also called Surabhi, is the mother of all cows in Hindu tradition, described across the Mahabharata, the Ramayana and several Puranas, and counted among the treasures that rose from the churning of the ocean. She is shown with her calf, and that pair is among the most given griha pravesh and Dhanteras pieces in India.

It is also the form almost nobody writes about, which is strange given how often it is bought. Ours are gold and silver plated, roughly two and a half to five inches, which is desk and console scale rather than mandir scale.

The tortoise, and the direction question

The Indian pedigree here is excellent. Kurma, the tortoise avatar of Vishnu, bore Mount Mandara on his back while the ocean was churned, and the Shatapatha Brahmana identifies the tortoise with the creator of all creatures. Steadiness under weight is the idea, and the longer version is in the Kurma avatar story.

The familiar instruction to face it north and sit it in a bowl of water comes from somewhere else entirely: the Black Tortoise of the North is one of the Four Celestial Animals of Chinese feng shui. Both traditions are real, they are not the same tradition, and if you are buying for an Indian household the Kurma story is the better one to tell when you hand it over.

Horses, and where feng shui begins

In Indian tradition the horse carries speed and vitality, and Uchchaihshravas, the divine white horse, came from the same churning of the ocean that produced Airavata and Kamdhenu. Ours run from a small plated knight horse up to antique finish horses at twelve and fifteen inches, which are the only pieces here that work on a floor or a large console rather than a shelf.

Worth separating out: the seven horse arrangement and the horse with coins motif are Chinese rather than Indian. Where we make those we name them feng shui, because calling them vastu would be a category error and the two traditions give different placement advice. The longer version is in can we keep horse statues at home.

The meenakari birds, and the camel

Peacock, swan, parrot and camel, all of them metal figures carrying hand-laid enamel colour, in the Jaipur meenakari tradition and sold under that name. The colour is saturated rather than reflective, so it holds its depth in ordinary room light rather than wanting a lamp angled at it. How the colour is put on we are not going to describe, because we have not been told in enough detail to say it plainly, and we would rather tell you less than tell you something invented.

The peacock is Paravani, the mount of Kartikeya, called Murugan in Tamil Nadu where the peacock is mayil. The swan is the hamsa, Saraswati's vahana, associated in tradition with discernment: separating what is worth keeping from what is not. The parrot appears with Kamadeva and with Meenakshi.

The camel is the honest exception. It carries little traditional symbolic weight in Indian practice, and some vastu writers actively advise against keeping one in the house. We are not going to invent a meaning to make it sound deeper, and we are not going to pretend that advice does not exist. Ours is sold as what it is, a handsome enamelled object from a genuine craft tradition. If you follow that advice, this is not the piece for you.

What is not here

The half of the question nobody answers. Vastu convention runs against big cats, birds of prey and figures of animals hunting, and against a single bird kept in a bedroom. We make none of those, so this is not advice that happens to point at our own shelf.

There is also no owl, deer, lion or eagle in this range, and people arrive looking for all four. If one of those is specifically what you want, it is quicker to say so plainly.

Plating, brass and enamel

The plated pieces are built from the inside out: a resin core, a layer of copper over it, then gold or silver electroplated on top, and on some pieces both. The copper is the part worth explaining, because resin cannot be plated directly and the copper is the layer the precious metal keys onto. It is also why these are light for their size, why the detail stays crisp on a two and a half inch cow, and why water is the one thing that takes the finish off.

Solid brass is a different object entirely. It is poured slowly into a mould made for that one idol, and the mould is broken open once the metal has cooled, so every casting gets its own. That is why the detail holds where a reusable sand mould softens it, and it is why the alloy has to be high grade, since a lesser brass will not fill the shape cleanly. It is also the reason a cheap brass elephant goes vague around the ears and the trunk. Sand cast brass is a different and much cheaper process. For solid metal generally, see brass idols.

Telling them apart in your hand comes down to weight and sound. Brass is markedly heavier for its size and rings with a sustained note when tapped, where a plated piece gives a dull knock. Our product pages state the material outright rather than making you guess.

Care splits the same way, and it follows the surface rather than the name on the listing. Brass darkens with time, which is oxidation and not damage; lemon and salt or soaked tamarind lifts it, then rinse and dry completely, since trapped moisture is what dulls it again within a week. Clean deeply only occasionally, because those pastes are mildly abrasive and repeated cleaning wears fine detail away permanently. Plated pieces are the opposite and take a dry cloth only, never an acidic paste, which strips plating rather than tarnish. The antique finish horses want the same care, since that patina was put there on purpose and a paste takes it off rather than brings it up. Meenakari enamel is wipe dry only.

Sizes, and the photograph problem

Showpieces photograph larger than they are, and that is the single most common regret on decorative pieces. Most of what is here sits between two and a half and six inches, which is desk, console and shelf scale. A two inch elephant pair is a paperweight rather than a centrepiece. Only the antique finish horses at twelve and fifteen inches read across a room. Measure the surface rather than the piece, and check whether an elephant listing is a single figure or a pair, since both exist.

On money, nothing here falls below a thousand rupees. The small plated pieces sit between one and two thousand, most of the range lands under five thousand, and only the large elephant pairs and the ambari elephants go above that.

Giving one

These are among the most given griha pravesh and Dhanteras pieces in India, and the reason is practical rather than sentimental. A finished metal object needs nothing from the person receiving it, does not date, and lasts long enough to be handed on. Unlike a murti, it also assumes nothing about which deity a household keeps, which is exactly why the cow with her calf works for a house you do not know.

Every piece is checked at our own warehouse before it goes out, and everything ships in our own packaging, made to be opened rather than merely to survive the journey. That matters more on a housewarming than it sounds, because the thing is usually unwrapped in front of the room.

For a dozen or more of one design, corporate gifts and bulk gift items are priced for it, or send the details on the bulk order enquiry page.

Where these sit in the range

For the wider decorative range see home decor, table and living room showpieces and wall decor. Pieces that belong to Chinese practice rather than Indian are grouped in vastu and feng shui decor. For the enamel work, the meenakari collection; for the plating, gold and silver plated idols. For deities rather than animals, god idols and figurines and Ganesha idols, and for the car rather than the house, car dashboard idols. These sit naturally with griha pravesh and housewarming gifts and with Dhanteras.