Do you know about the Gadia Lohar community? Most people outside Rajasthan don't and that's exactly why we wanted to write about them.
At āsmi london, we are drawn to crafts that don't just survive but adapt, again and again, refusing to disappear even when the world around them changes completely. Few traditions tell that story as vividly as the Gadia Lohar community of Rajasthan: a tribe of nomadic blacksmiths whose craft has reinvented itself at least twice in the last seven centuries just to stay alive.
This is one of those crafts we believe deserves far more recognition than it currently has. It isn't as instantly recognisable as some of India's better-known metal traditions, yet it carries an extraordinary history of resilience, and the pieces it produces today — including the brass tealight holders in our collection — are a direct continuation of that story.
A Life Always on the Move
For the Gadia Lohar, home was never a fixed address. Families travelled by bullock cart — locally called a Gadi — loaded with everything they needed to live and work on the road. Valuable belongings were kept in wooden chests known as Thalia, while scrap metal, fuel, and other raw materials hung from the back, tied on with cloth, swaying with the rhythm of the road. A goat and a dog usually travelled alongside, completing a picture of a family whose entire household moved together, village to village, season to season.
The community is also known locally as the Chettors. According to oral history, they migrated from Rajasthan in the year 1313 and eventually settled in Muddarda village, in Mehsana taluka — yet "settling" never quite stopped them from moving. Even after establishing a home village, they continued travelling along fixed seasonal routes, repairing tools and selling metalware in the villages along the way, before returning home once a year.
A Craft Built on Necessity
In its earliest form, the Gadia Lohar's work was entirely practical. Villages needed someone who could repair an axe, mend a gate, or forge a new farming tool, and the Gadia Lohar filled that role — moving between hot work (forging over fire) and cold work (finishing and fitting) with a kit of hand tools that had barely changed in generations: an anvil (Eran), hammers of different weights (Ghen and Hathoda), chisels (Chhini), files (Reti), pincers (Sandasi and Kaglisandasi), and a measuring disc (Chakri), among others. With this kit, there was very little metalwork in a village they couldn't take on.
Reinventing the Craft, Twice
The first real turning point came with industrialisation. As factory-made tools and polymer products became available, villagers had less need for a travelling blacksmith to repair their old metal tools — but they were happy to hand those old, worn pieces over. The Gadia Lohar, as recounted by craftsman Babubhai Hargovinddas Luharia, responded by shifting their focus entirely: instead of repairing old metalware, they began melting it down and reshaping it into entirely new objects — small tables, idols, jewellery boxes, lamps, trays, and kitchenware, decorated using techniques like punch work and hammer-mark patterning. These pieces were prized everywhere from ordinary village homes to royal kitchens.
The second turning point came when the supply of old scrap metal eventually ran out — there simply wasn't enough left to trade for. Rather than let the craft end there, the Gadia Lohar started buying brass sheets directly from Ahmedabad and designing pieces from scratch, entirely on their own terms.
Many families have since moved into more stable, better-paying work, and the number of practising Gadia Lohar artisans has shrunk considerably. But for the craftsmen who remain, the techniques are unchanged from those used by their grandparents — the same anvil, the same hammer, the same eye for pattern and proportion, only now shaping pieces for a very different kind of home than the one they were first designed for.
In Our Collection
Each of these pieces is made from recycled brass, finished with hand-punched detailing that catches the light differently with every tealight lit inside it — a small, direct echo of a craft that has always worked with what was already there, and made something new of it.
-
Brass Bird Tea Light Holder (Set of 2) — a bird form finished with delicate leaf motifs, a lighter, more whimsical take on the same hand-punched technique.
-
Brass Lotus Tea Light Holder (Set of 2) — the lotus, a symbol of prosperity and purity, rendered through meticulous hand-cut and hand-punched detailing across its petals.
Each set arrives with vanilla-scented candles, ready to light — a small ritual that connects a London home to a craft that has endured for over 700 years.
Discover these pieces and more handcrafted traditions in our Decor Accents collection .