Maa Durga

About

A murti for a home mandir is a different object from a pandal pratima A good deal of what people look for under Durga in September is not sold online by anybody. The pratima that stands in a Bengal, Assam or Odisha pandal is built in unfired clay over a bamboo and straw frame, painted in the weeks before Shashthi, worshipped through the days of the puja and taken to the water on Dashami. It is commissioned locally, from Kumartuli or from a potter the para has used for years, and it is made to be given back rather than kept. Cuttack does the same festival with silver and gold filigree behind the clay, which is a craft in its own right and also not something that arrives in a carton. What we make is the other thing. A murti in solid brass or in a white and gold finish, sized for a home mandir, meant to stay there. She is cleaned rather than immersed, and she is kept year round rather than for nine nights. If the piece is going into a pandal, order clay locally. If it is going on a shelf and staying, keep reading. Start with the width, because the height will mislead you A seated eight-armed Durga on her lion is among the widest shapes made here. The height in a listing is the number everybody checks and the one that matters least: the arms fan out, the trishul and the bow project past the shoulder line, and the lion adds his own width at the base. Measure the shelf, not the gap. Four to six inches covers most home mandirs and it is the range we keep, a seated brass Durga at four and five inches, a standing brass Durga with the lion beside her at six, a white and gold Sherawali, and the Nav Durga pocket temple , which is a shrine that closes. Much taller than that wants an open console or a floor mandir, because a nine or ten inch figure of this deity will touch the sides of a cabinet before its head reaches the top. We do not make a dashboard sized Durga. The pocket temple is the piece that travels, and it closes around the nine forms for a bag, a desk or a first room