Nartaki: Mohenjo-daro Dancing Girl Statue in Dhokra Brass

She stands barely seven inches tall, one hand on her hip, a necklace at her throat, the original Dancing Girl of Mohenjo-Daro was cast in bronze approximately 4,500 years ago and is now one of the most recognized objects in the world. This replica was made by Dhokra artisans using the identical lost-wax technique: a wax figure built by hand, encased in clay, molten brass poured in, the clay broken away to reveal what the heat made. The same method. The same figure. Four and a half millennia apart.

The Dancing Girl, unearthed at Mohenjo-Daro in the Indus Valley and dated to approximately 2500 BCE, was cast using a technique that Dhokra artisans in Jharkhand, West Bengal, Odisha, and Chhattisgarh still practice today. That continuity is not metaphor; it is material fact. This replica was made by those same artisans using the same lost-wax process: each figure begins as a hand-modeled wax form, gets encased in clay, and is fired until the wax runs out and molten brass takes its place. The clay shell is broken open once. What's inside is what you receive.

The surface is the color of aged brass, warm, with the slight granularity the lost-wax process always leaves behind. Set her on a shelf at eye level. She has been worth looking at for four and a half thousand years.

Lost-Wax Dhokra Casting · 4,000-Year Technique · Tribal Central India · Brass

Care Instructions

• Dust with a dry, soft cloth.
• Do not immerse in water.
• Polish brass figurines occasionally with a brass-cleaning cloth.
• Iron figurines: apply a light coat of mineral oil to prevent rust.