Home Decor

Indian home decor is usually sold as one of two things, a puja item or a showpiece with no connection to anything, and what sits between them is what most people are actually looking for. A Ganesha on a console. A Krishna on a bookshelf. A pair of elephants at the door. Those are the pieces here: deities, auspicious forms and decorative animals, finished to look right in a living room under ordinary light rather than under a lamp in a shrine.

The distinction is practical rather than spiritual. A murti kept for daily puja is bathed, dressed and offered milk, turmeric and kumkum, so it has to be solid metal to survive that. A piece kept as decor is dusted and looked at. That one difference decides the finish, the size and most of the cost, and it is worth settling before anything else.

Whether a god idol belongs in a living room at all

People ask this before they ask anything else, and it deserves a straight answer rather than a sales one.

Keeping a deity figure outside the mandir is entirely ordinary in Indian homes and always has been. A Ganesha at the entrance, a Lakshmi in the hall, a Nataraja on a shelf: none of these is unusual, and none of them requires you to treat the room as a shrine. The conventions that genuinely exist are about care rather than location. Keep the piece clean, keep it off the floor, and keep it out of a bathroom or a wall directly backing one. Feet should not point at it while people sleep, which is the real reason bedrooms are handled with thought rather than ruled out.

Where a household is unsure, or where you are buying for somebody else's house, the safe answer is a form that is auspicious without being devotional. The Kamdhenu cow with her calf, a pair of trunk-up elephants, a tortoise, a horse, a swan: each carries meaning, none carries an obligation, and nobody has to decide where it sits in their practice. Those are also the pieces that move fastest, which tells you how many people are buying for a house they have not been inside.

What suits each surface

An entrance takes a pair rather than a single piece, placed to face into the room, and it takes height more than fine detail, because it is seen from a distance and usually in passing. A console or a sideboard is the one surface where a single larger figure earns its place, somewhere around eight to twelve inches, since anything smaller reads as clutter beside a lamp and a set of keys. A bookshelf or a study desk wants three to five inches and rewards fine work, because it is seen from two feet away.

Wall pieces behave differently from anything on a table. Metal on a wall catches light from one angle only, so where the lamp or the window sits matters more than how big the piece is. What is reliably available on that front is the framed murti panel and the relief wall art rather than the hanging brass toran, which is made in short runs and sells through quickly.

An urli is the exception to all of the above, because it is the one decorative piece that actually gets used. Fill the shallow bowl with water, floating flowers and tealights and set it near an entrance. It was a Kerala bell-metal cooking and Ayurvedic vessel long before it was decor, and it still appears in the Vishukkani arrangement at new year. It looks wrong empty, which is precisely why it stays in use instead of being dusted.

The finishes, and which one a decor piece should be

Gold and silver plated is the right default for decor, and it is worth understanding why. 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 layer that matters, because resin cannot be plated directly and the copper is what the precious metal keys onto. That construction is why these pieces are light, why the detail stays crisp at a small size, and why water is the one thing that ruins them. On a piece that will never be bathed, the single real weakness never comes up, and it presents at its best from the day it arrives with nothing asked of anybody. See gold and silver plated pieces.

An antique finish is a patina applied on purpose. It reads as considered rather than bright, and it suits a room with wood, warm light or older furniture, where a high-shine piece would sit oddly. It is also where the larger statement figures live, the ten to fifteen inch Vishnu, Lakshmi, Krishna and horse pieces.

The white and gold Premium Edits are a resin core coated in marble dust, which is what gives them the surface and the weight of marble. The jewellery is made separately in brass, electroplated, then applied to the figure by hand one piece at a time, which is why the finish varies a little between pieces. That variation is hand work rather than a fault. Keep them dry, and lift them by the base rather than by the jewellery.

Solid brass is poured slowly into a mould made for that one idol, and the mould is broken open once the metal has cooled. Every casting gets its own mould, which 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. Sand cast brass is a different and cheaper process, and it is the reason a bargain brass idol looks soft around the face and the fingers. Brass is also the one finish that tolerates water and turmeric, so it is the choice if the piece will ever cross from decor into actual puja.

The meenakari work is the Jaipur enamel tradition, in which colour is worked into metal rather than laid on top of it, and on our pieces the enamel is laid on by hand. It is the most labour-intensive finish here and the most fragile, and it is where the colour is, in peacocks, parrots, elephants with ambaris, camels, horses and tortoises. Wipe it dry, never scrub it, and never use a paste on it.

Telling solid brass from plated in your hand

Two checks, useful in a shop as much as at home. Solid brass is noticeably heavier than a plated piece of the same size, because a plated piece is built on a resin core. And it rings: tap it, and solid brass gives a sustained note where a resin core gives a dull knock. Our product pages state the material outright, and where a piece is plated rather than solid we say so.

Silver decor without buying silver

A good number of people arrive looking for silver home decor, and the honest distinction is worth making before you spend. Silver plating gives you the colour, the reflectivity and the crispness of silver on a piece you can actually place, at a fraction of what the same object would cost in solid metal. Solid silver is a bullion purchase, priced by weight and bought largely for that reason, and it is a different kind of shopping altogether.

What plated silver asks in return is that it stays dry. No abhishek, no rinsing under a tap, no damp cloth left sitting on it. A dry cloth, and it holds its finish for years.

Photographs lie about size

This is the most common thing to get wrong on a decorative piece, and it is what a return usually turns out to be about. Every listing carries the height in inches, and that number is more reliable than any photograph, because a piece shot alone against a white background looks identical at three inches and at twelve. Measure the surface before you choose. A three inch figure vanishes on a six foot sideboard, and a twelve inch one overwhelms a bookshelf.

Elephants, cows and the rest of the auspicious animals

Elephants are asked for more than anything else, usually as a pair with trunks raised, conventionally placed flanking an entrance and facing in. In the iconography the elephant connects to rain, and through rain to abundance, which is a traditional association rather than something we would promise you. The Kamdhenu cow with her calf is the other constant, and it is what people choose when they do not know a household, because it is domestic rather than devotional and asks nothing of anybody. Beyond those, tortoises, horses, swans, peacocks and parrots. See animal figurines and statues, or showpieces for a table or console.

What vastu says, and what we will not say

Vastu Shastra is a documented body of Indian architectural theory with a real textual lineage, and feng shui is a documented Chinese spatial practice. Both are genuine traditions, and the forms attached to them, the tortoise, the Kamdhenu, the elephant pair, the horse, are genuine parts of them. In the Vastu tradition the northeast, ishanya, is the quadrant associated with the household shrine, and that association is long-standing.

What we will not do is tell you what an object will do for you. Plenty of sellers promise wealth, luck, protection or health from a metal figure. We would rather describe where a piece sits in its tradition and let you decide what it means to you. See vastu and feng shui pieces.

What to spend

Under 500 is the small plated figure, a single animal or a compact deity, and it is the band most desk and return-gift buying sits in. Under 1000 covers a properly finished small plated deity, a meenakari animal or an urli set. Under 3000 is the widest band here, and where the mid-size plated murtis, the marble dust pieces and most of the brass sit. Under 5000 opens up the substantial brass and the larger antique-finish figures. Above that, into the ten thousand band, are the statement pieces: the tall standing Vishnu and Lakshmi sets, the bigger horses and the combination sets.

At the same money, take the smaller finely finished piece over the larger plain one. Finishing is what shows across a room. Size is what shows in a photograph.

Giving it rather than keeping it

A good share of what leaves here is a gift, and two things follow from that. 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. A decorative piece is very often handed over in a room full of people and unwrapped on the spot, and it should not need a trip to a wrapping counter first.

For a new home the gift logic is specific enough to deserve its own guide: see house warming and griha pravesh gifts, which covers what to give, what not to give, and what actually gets used rather than dusted. For the festival season see Diwali gifts, for a marriage wedding gifts, and where the same piece has to go to many people, corporate gifts and bulk orders, or send the count and the date through the bulk enquiry page.

Keeping it looking right

Brass darkens. That is copper at the surface reacting with air, not damage, and the metal underneath is untouched. Lemon and salt, or soaked tamarind, lifts it. Rinse, then dry completely, because trapped moisture is what dulls it again within a week. Deep clean rarely rather than often, since the pastes are mildly abrasive and repeated cleaning wears fine detail away for good.

Everything else takes a dry cloth and nothing more. Plated pieces, because water is what ruins them. Antique finishes, because the patina is the finish, so a cleaning paste strips exactly what you were trying to restore. Meenakari, because the enamel is fragile. Marble dust pieces for the same reason, lifted by the base rather than by the jewellery. Lacquered brass too, where an acidic cleaner attacks the seal instead of the tarnish.

The names these go by

Murti, moorti and murthi across the north and west. Vigraham or vigraha in the south. Idol, statue, figurine, sculpture or showpiece in English, depending on who is writing. Bhagwan pieces, god idols and deity figures all mean the same shelf. It is one category under a great many spellings.

What is not here

Worth being plain about, because it saves you a search. There is no furniture, no textiles, no cushions or curtains, no vases, no planters, no mirrors, no wall clocks and no electric lighting. If that is the kind of home decor you are after, this is not the shop for it. What is made here is metal and marble dust: deities, auspicious animals, diyas, urlis and the small pieces that go around them.

For the mandir rather than the room, the lamps, thalis and chowkis are in pooja essentials, and the full range of deities in god idols and figurines. For something that closes and travels, pocket temples. For a vehicle, car dashboard idols, which are sized and weighted for one and are a genuinely different design problem from a shelf piece.