Hand-Carved Octagonal Table

This is a low table with a marble top, the kind that sits in the middle of the baithak or out on the verandah with everyone gathered round it. The top is 1 piece of white marble with soft grey veins running through it, cut into 8 sides and polished until it feels cool under the hand even in May. Below it sits a 6-sided wooden frame, and on each side a flower has been crafted into the panel, a white phool with an orange and yellow centre and green leaves on deep blue, so there are 6 phool going all the way round. Between them the wood has been turned into thin spindles, like the railing of an old haveli balcony, and the marble reaches out past the frame on every side, which leaves room for a cup or a plate at the edge.

Tables of this style come from the Rajasthani habit of sitting low and close, in the chowk of a haveli where the whole family would collect in the evening with chai and a plate of namkeen in the middle. The blue and white of the flower work belongs to the same family of colours people know from Jaipur's blue pottery, so it feels at home in a house that already has some brass, some jaali or some block print in it.

The table stands on 4 carved legs that curve outward at the foot, and there is nothing in the centre, so knees and feet go under it without hitting a post. The small wooden drops hanging at the corners are only decoration, not legs. The frame has been given a dark polish that lets the grain show, and the wood will not swell if water sits on it for a while, pani mein phoolti nahi, which matters on a table that sees chai, lassi and a jug of water every day. It is a heavy piece, and once it has been placed, it stays where you put it.

Made in our Jodhpur workshop.