Buying as a gift

Most of the small pieces here leave as presents, and the questions that come with a gift are different from the ones that come with buying for yourself. You know less about what the recipient wants and you cannot ask.

If you know nothing about their practice

Buy a Shakyamuni or a Green Tara. Both are universally welcome, neither carries an association that could land wrongly, and both are the forms workshops cast best because they cast them most.

Avoid the protectors. Mahakala and the wrathful figures are meaningful objects to the people who want them and an unsettling one to somebody who did not ask — they are not ornaments, and they are not a safe guess.

If it is their first statue

Three to six inches, oxidized or antique brass, under the price of a good dinner for two. The mini statues and gifts under $500 are exactly this. A large gilt figure as a first piece is a lovely object and a slightly awkward obligation.

The set of three small Buddhas is the most-given piece in the catalogue, for the obvious reason: it survives not knowing which form they would have chosen.

If it marks something

A birth, a recovery, an opening, a retirement. Medicine Buddha for health, White Tara for long life, Amitayus likewise, Manjushri for a student or a scholar, Dzambhala for a new business. If you want the reasoning behind those, the journal explains how to read a figure at all: which figure is which.

Timing

This is the part people get wrong. A piece in stock ships in days. A piece cast to order takes three to six weeks and sometimes longer, because the face is one person's work and cannot be hurried without showing.

If it has to arrive by a date, tell us the date before you order. We will say plainly whether it is possible rather than finding out together.

What we do about presentation

Pieces are packed to survive the courier, which is not the same as packed to be handed over. Ask and we will pack it to be opened — and we will leave the invoice out of the box and email it to you instead, so the price is not the first thing they see.

We do not gift-wrap in the shop sense. A cloth wrap and a plain box is what the workshops themselves use, and it looks better than paper.

If you get it wrong

The change-of-mind window runs from delivery, so a gift given some weeks after it arrives may fall outside it. Tell us it is a gift when you order and we will be reasonable about the dates.