Table Decor

The pieces run from 2.5 inches, which is a desk or a bedside, to 15 inches, which wants a console to itself. That range is the only thing they have in common. They are objects seen at close quarters rather than across a room, and that is a harder test than it sounds: at arm's length the finish and the relief have to hold up, and a figure that photographs well from a distance can look coarse once it is on the table in front of you.

Most of what is here also sits in home decor, which is the whole range. The filter is the surface. Pieces made to hang are in wall decor, and anything meant for daily worship rather than display is in pooja essentials.

The surface decides the size, not the piece

A console or sideboard stands around 30 to 36 inches, so whatever is on it meets you at chest height when you walk past. That surface swallows a small figure. Eight to eleven inches is where a single piece starts to hold its own there, which is what the taller antique horses and the eleven inch enamel elephants are for.

A centre or coffee table is roughly half that height and you look down onto it from a sofa. Footprint matters more than height there, and a tall narrow figure reads as something to see around rather than something to look at.

On a dining table, keep it low enough that two people seated opposite can see each other over it, which in practice means under about a foot, or accept that it moves every time the table is laid.

A desk is the case people get most wrong. You are sitting a foot away from it and you need the surface for work, so 2.5 to 5 inches is the size that earns its place. That is the range people are actually after when they search for an idol for an office or a study table, and going bigger is the common regret. Turn it to face you rather than the door, since you are the one who looks at it.

Measure the depth of the surface as well as the width. A 15 inch running horse is also long, and a floating shelf six inches deep will not take it whatever the wall can hold.

Three at different heights, or one, and a pair is its own case

Odd numbers are easier to arrange because nothing has to match. Put three pieces of clearly different heights together and the unevenness is the point. Put four together and the eye starts looking for a symmetry it will not find, so the grouping has to be far more deliberate before it works at all.

Two identical pieces are a different problem and they want a symmetrical job: either side of a doorway, either side of a mirror, the two ends of a console. Elephant pairs are sold as pairs for exactly that reason and look like two stray objects once they are split up.

One piece beats three whenever the piece is busy on its own. Enamel work, an ambari elephant with its howdah, anything above about ten inches: these are already doing a great deal, and an empty surface around them is what lets them read. On a shelf under two feet wide, one is the answer regardless.

Figures are what we make, and it is worth saying what we do not

Deities bought as much for the form as for worship are in god idols. Animals, the older and larger decorative tradition in Indian homes, are in animal decor, where the questions about trunk direction and which animal faces where are answered properly. Enamel work is in the meenakari collection.

We do not make vases, photo frames, table clocks, candles or planters, and there is no plan to. If that is what table decor means to you, a general homeware retailer will serve you better than we will, and it is quicker to hear that now than after a delivery.

For anyone looking for a table for a murti rather than a murti for a table: the piece you want is a chowki, the low platform an idol sits on, and those are in chowki and pooja essentials rather than here.

How the finishes are made, and what it means for the table

Plated pieces are a resin core with a layer of copper over it and 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. It is also why these pieces are light, why the detail stays crisp at a small size, and why water is the one thing they cannot take. The lightness is a real advantage on a surface: a 15 inch plated figure can go on a floating shelf that would never take the same shape in solid metal. See gold and silver plated idols.

The white and gold premium edits are a resin core coated in marble dust, which 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. 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 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. The brass on this page moves in and out of stock; the standing range is in brass idols.

Meenakari 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 we sell and the most delicate. An antique finish, in antique idols, is a patina put on deliberately rather than one the piece earned.

Most of this is a dry cloth, and lemon and salt is the exception

Lemon and salt, or soaked tamarind, is for solid brass and nothing else. It lifts the tarnish, and you rinse and dry the piece completely afterwards, because trapped moisture is what dulls it again within weeks. Do it occasionally rather than often, since the pastes are mildly abrasive and repeated cleaning wears fine detail away for good. Brass darkening is copper oxidising at the surface, not damage, and whether you polish it back or leave it is preference.

Everything else gets a dry cloth. On a plated piece the metal is a thin electroplate, so an acidic paste takes the gold or silver off rather than the tarnish. An antique finish is a patina applied on purpose, so the same paste removes the thing you were trying to bring back. Enamel is wiped, never scrubbed. Lacquered brass takes a dry cloth too, because the acid goes for the seal instead.

Water is the other rule and it applies only to plated pieces: no abhishek, no washing under a tap, no spot on a sill that takes the rain. If a piece is going to be bathed, it needs to be solid brass.

To tell one from the other by hand, use weight and sound. Solid brass is noticeably heavier for its size and rings with a sustained note when tapped, where a plated resin core gives a dull knock. Every product page states the material outright.

Put it where the light is

Metal has nothing to give in a dim corner. Gold and silver plating and polished brass work by reflecting something, and enamel colour needs light falling on it to read as colour at all. In a dark alcove they are all just a dark shape. Within reach of a lamp or a window they do the thing you bought them for. Decide where the light falls before deciding what goes there, because it is the one variable you cannot fix by changing the piece.

As a gift, and what it costs

A figure for a table is the safest gift in this range, because it asks nothing of the person receiving it. No assembly, no upkeep, no decision about where it has to go. Nothing here sits under a thousand rupees. Most of the range falls between ₹1,500 and ₹5,000, which is where the plated figures and the smaller enamel pieces are, and the largest sizes stay under ₹10,000.

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 matters here because a table piece is usually handed over in front of a room.

For a new home, griha pravesh and housewarming gifts. For weddings, wedding gifts, and small pieces in quantity for wedding return gifts. Dhanteras and Diwali are the seasonal peaks. A desk sized piece is the standard gift for an office opening, which is corporate gifts and bulk gift items, or send the numbers on the bulk order page and we will quote. Placement rules and the vastu questions people ask about them are on vastu and feng shui.