A shelf-worthy pair from two different Indian craft traditions: a hand-turned Channapatna figurine and block-printed Ajrakh coasters.
Channapatna is sixty kilometres from Bangalore. A Persian craftsman turned up in the eighteenth century with a lathe and a good idea. A local tree said, I was made for this. Two hundred years later the same families are still at it, and still better at it than most of us are at anything.
Here is what happens next.
Your guest opens the box, finds a small lacquered elephant, and thinks oh, cute. Five minutes later it is on a shelf. Ten minutes later someone asks where it came from. Thirty minutes later they are telling your wedding story as though it were their own.
The Ajrakh coasters underneath come from a different state, a different craft, a different rhythm. Together they say the same thing: this was made slowly, properly, by people who knew exactly what they were doing.
Contains: Channapatna lacquered wooden figurine · two Ajrakh block-printed linen coasters
Minimum 100 boxes. Curated, packed and shipped from India.
We haven’t made this exact box yet, so the picture above is an illustration rather than a photograph. Everything in it we can source. And since all of it is handmade, no two ever come out quite the same anyway. Take it as the idea, not the object.