Marble Inlay Process

The process of Marble Inlay "Pacchekari /Parchinkari" begins with an idea and meticulous planning of design. The designers then sketch the plan also known as a "Khaka". Traditional designs predominantly constitute of flowers, fruits and birds inspired from nature.

After creating the final draft of the design, the master artisan "Ustad" sets the colour scheme and shades for all the elements. A careful selection of high quality natural gemstones is put together by experts. Selecting the perfect gemstones is very important at this stage for exquisite results.

The selected gemstones are cleaned and cut into small pieces of uniform thickness. These gemstones are meticulously turned on specially designed hand driven emery discs, to shape flowers, buds, leaves and other elements of the design. This process is extremely slow and requires great mastery on handling microscopic sized gemstones, as some very complex flowers can be made of hundreds of smaller, individual pieces.

The shaped gemstones are handed over to a specialist marble carver, who carves the marble to make precise cavities for each element. Due to the hardness of the marble, and its crystalline nature, this can only be done by hand, with chisels of different shapes & points.

Each cavity is matched with the corresponding gemstone for a perfect fit. After the approval from the "Ustad" the inlay process begins. A specially made permanent adhesive is used to set the gemstones. This ensures the gemstones remain securely fixed, over the lifetime of the artefact.

Finally the object is hand polished by a highly trained polisher. Different grades of polishing powder is used in several stages, to achieve a glossy satin finish. It is not easy to get a perfect surface finish, as all gemstones and  marble are of different hardness. Only with extreme care and experience the polisher is able get a perfectly  smooth mirror finish on the art object.