Thamel Metal Studio

A small Kathmandu studio near Chhetrapati that casts the Nyingma figures — Guru Rinpoche above all — and does it better than workshops with ten times its output. The hat, the staff and the outward gaze are what make that figure hard: it is the one form in the catalogue that has to make eye contact, and a face that is a fraction out reads as vacant rather than direct. The studio casts it in both fire-gilt copper and oxidized brass and will not sell a piece whose face it is unhappy with, which is why its lead times are the longest here. Thamel Metal Studio sells through us and keeps the full value of every sale. We take nothing from it.