Brass Latkan

Better said at the top than discovered at checkout. Every subject and every size is out of stock, and that is the position across the store rather than just on this page. The buy buttons still work, so an order placed today is a wait rather than a dispatch, and we are not going to put a date on it we cannot keep. If you want one particular design that may still be the right call, because the range is small and each subject exists in one form only, so there is nothing to substitute it with. If you need brass in the house this week, the brass murtis and the brass diyas and pooja pieces are stocked and shipping. The rest of this page is here so you know what the range is.

What a brass latkan is, and what it is not

A latkan is anything that hangs, and most of what the word turns up is fabric: beaded moti latkans, tassels and mirror work made for weddings and for a mandap. This is a different object entirely. A brass latkan is cast metal with a row of small bells strung beneath it, hung in a doorway, and it is permanent in a way the fabric kind is not. It is heavy enough to need a real hook, it is bought once rather than every season, and it survives being knocked. If the beaded kind is what you want, this is the wrong page and we do not make them.

Where it goes

Inside the main door frame is the usual place, and the pooja room doorway is the other. Measure the door swing before you fix a hook, because the common mistake is mounting it where the leaf presses flat against it, which silences the bells instead of sounding them. Keep it under cover. A porch that takes driving rain is the one place brass will not thank you for, and an entrance that gets both sun and monsoon will darken it far faster than an indoor doorway.

The subjects, and what each is for

Swastik and Om Swastik carry the auspicious mark to the threshold, which is where most households draw it in kumkum anyway; the brass version is the permanent form of a mark that otherwise gets redrawn every Diwali. Shubh Labh is the pair written on either side of a doorway at Diwali and works the same way. Ganesha is the doorway deity by long convention, Vighnaharta, the one who clears what blocks an entrance, and he appears here both as a figure and set inside a square frame. Lakshmi Ganesh, and the trio with Saraswati added, are the Diwali grouping kept at the door rather than on a shelf: wealth, beginnings and learning arriving through the same opening.

Brass is not a preference here, it is the only right answer

A doorway piece gets touched, knocked and weathered, which is precisely where a plated finish fails. Our plated pieces are a resin core with a layer of copper over it and gold or silver electroplated on that, and they are built to sit still and be looked at; water is the one thing that ruins them. A latkan does the opposite of sitting still, so plating it would be a false economy sold as a saving.

Solid brass is poured slowly into a mould made for that one design and broken open once the metal has cooled, so every casting gets its own mould. 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. On a latkan that shows in the small bells and in the pierced work between figures, which are the first things to come out thick and blurred when the metal is poor. Sand cast brass is a different and cheaper process.

Living with one

Brass darkens. That is surface oxide and nothing worse, and a paste of lemon and salt takes it back to bright whenever you want it, though plenty of households prefer it left dark and only clean it before Diwali. Every piece is checked at our own warehouse before it goes out, and everything ships in our own packaging, which is made to be opened rather than merely to survive the journey. That is worth knowing here because a latkan is a common griha pravesh gift and is usually handed over on the doorstep it is going to hang in.

What it costs, and why

The single symbol pieces, a Swastik or a plain Ganesha, sit between 2,000 and 3,000. The Om Swastik and Shubh Labh forms and the larger Ganesha designs run to around 4,000. The multi figure pieces, Lakshmi Ganesh and the trio with Saraswati, start near 6,000 and go past 10,000, because there is more metal in them and a larger mould behind each casting. That is the honest reason a brass latkan costs many times what a beaded one does, and it is also the reason it outlives it.

For societies, builders and offices ordering doorway pieces in quantity, the bulk enquiry, though read the stock position above before you plan around it.