Urli Decorative Bowls

About

What an urli is, and what these are An urli is a wide, shallow bowl that holds water. You float flower heads, petals, tealights or small diyas on the surface and set it near the door. It is called uruli in Kerala, where it began as a bell metal cooking and Ayurvedic vessel, and it still turns up in the Vishukkani arrangement at the Malayalam new year. Somewhere along the way the cooking pot stopped being a cooking pot and became the thing that greets people at the entrance, which is how most of India uses it now. Worth being straight about what these are. They are decorative sets, lightweight metal with a brass finish, sold in sets of two, three and ten. They are not solid cast brass and they are not bell metal, so do not cook in one and do not buy one expecting a vessel that gets passed down. What they are good at is the job most people actually want, which is holding water and flowers at a door and looking right doing it, at a fraction of the weight and the cost of solid metal. Size is the decision, and most people get it wrong The bowls here run from about 9 inches across to about 16. At floor level beside a door, anything under 10 inches disappears, especially once it is full of water and the flowers have flattened the profile. Twelve to sixteen inches is the size that reads from across a room, and it is the size worth buying if the urli is going by the entrance. Below that, put it on a console or a centre table where it is seen from two feet away rather than ten. Wider and shallower beats deeper every time. An urli is looked at from above, so surface area is what you are really buying. A deep bowl of the same diameter floats the same few flowers and then hides them down a well. Water, and the part nobody warns you about Fill it about two thirds, and fill it after you have put it where it is going rather than before. A 16 inch bowl full of water is heavier than it looks and there is no graceful way to carry one across a room. Change the water every day or two. S