About us

The problem with the usual chain

A cast statue passes through four or five hands between the workshop and a shrine, and each one takes a margin. The artisan — the only person who actually made anything — takes the smallest.

What we do instead

We buy from named workshops in Patan, Bhaktapur and Kathmandu, list every piece under the workshop that made it, and pay that workshop directly. If you want to know who cast the statue in front of you, the answer is on the page.

Why no two are the same

Everything here is made by the lost-wax method. The artisan models the figure in wax, encases it in clay, fires the mould so the wax runs out, and pours molten metal into the void. To get the casting out, the mould is broken. That is not a quirk of the process — it is the process, and it is why a repeat order is a different object rather than another copy of the same one.

What that means for you

Small variations between two statues of the same deity and the same size are evidence of how they were made. A face chased by hand is not a face stamped by a machine, and the difference is visible if you look at the eyes.