Vastu & Feng Shui

Almost every Indian shop selling these pieces uses the two words together as though they were one subject. They are not, and the difference is worth a minute before you buy.

Vastu Shastra is Indian. It is a documented body of architectural literature, and what those texts govern is buildings: plot orientation, proportion, where rooms sit, the open centre of a plan, water, town layout. They are architecture manuals.

Feng shui is Chinese. A separate geomantic tradition with its own vocabulary altogether: chi, the bagua map, the Four Celestial Animals.

The consequence sellers rarely mention is that the classical vastu texts say a great deal about where to put a wall and nothing at all about where to put a brass tortoise. Object placement of the kind sold as vastu today is largely modern practice. That does not make it worthless; plenty of custom is younger than people assume and still means something to the households that keep it. It does mean we will not cite a Sanskrit text at you for a rule that was written on a blog.

Where a piece comes from Chinese practice, we say so. The horse with coins is a Chinese motif. Calling it Indian would be easy and untrue.

What we actually stock

Kamdhenu cow with calf

The largest part of this collection by some distance, in gold plated and silver plated finishes from roughly 2.5 to 5 inches, and in several combos. Kamdhenu, also called Surabhi, is the wish-fulfilling cow of Hindu tradition, described across the epics and the Puranas and counted among the treasures that rose from the churning of the ocean. The cow with her calf is the form most households choose, and it is the piece most often bought here for a new home or a wedding.

Elephant pairs

Sold as trunk-up pairs in brass and in plated metal, from 2 inches up to 6. Elephants in Indian art go back a very long way: Gaja Lakshmi, the goddess flanked by elephants, appears in stone from the last centuries BCE, and Airavata, Indra's white elephant, is named in the Bhagavad Gita. In that iconography elephants are connected with rain, and through rain with abundance.

Trunk direction is a different matter. The raised trunk is a much-loved modern convention with, as far as we can find, no basis in the classical Gaja Lakshmi iconography. We make them because people like them, which is reason enough. More at brass elephant and animal statues.

Tortoise

We stock the Ashtalakshmi tortoise in silver plate. The tortoise has a genuinely old Indian pedigree that almost nobody mentions: Kurma, the tortoise avatar of Vishnu, bore Mount Mandara on his back during the churning of the ocean, and the Vedic literature associates the tortoise with steadiness. The instruction you will more often read, that it must face north and sit in water, comes from somewhere else entirely, since 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 the Indian one is the better story.

Horses

Antique-finish running and standing horses at 12 and 15 inches, and a gold plated feng shui knight horse. The horse in Indian tradition carries speed and vitality; Uchchaihshravas, the divine white horse, also came from the churning of the ocean. The horse-with-coins arrangement is Chinese in origin and we name it as feng shui, because that is what it is.

Placement, described rather than prescribed

Conventions widely followed in Indian households, reported as convention and not as instruction: a pair of elephants near the entrance, usually facing into the room. The tortoise facing north or north-east. Symbolic pieces kept above floor level. The pooja shelf in the north-east, which is the one idea here with a real textual lineage, since ishanya is a genuine category in the vastu literature.

Follow them if they matter in your family. With that one exception they are not rules we can source to a text, and we would rather say so than pretend.

What we will not tell you

That any object here will make you wealthier, healthier, luckier or safer. We do not know that, nobody selling these knows it, and a page that promises it is selling you something other than the object. What we will say is that these are well-made pieces in solid brass and plated metal, carrying forms Indian and Chinese households have kept for a long time for reasons those traditions can explain.

Materials and care

Solid brass darkens over time. That is oxidation, not damage; lemon and salt or tamarind lifts it, then rinse and dry fully. Plated pieces are the opposite and want a dry cloth only, never an acidic paste, which strips plating. The wider ranges are in brass idols and gold and silver plated idols.

For the rest of the range see home decor, showpieces for the living room and god idols and figurines. These are common griha pravesh and housewarming gifts, wedding gifts and corporate gifts; for volume, send the details on the bulk order enquiry page.

Before you order

• Photographs flatten scale on small figurines badly. A 2 inch elephant pair is a desk object; a 15 inch horse is furniture.
• Confirm solid brass or plated. They age differently and clean differently.
• Elephants are sold as pairs. Check whether a listing is one piece or two.
• Buy the form you like looking at. It will be in your eyeline every day.