Pandit Lallu Prasad Sharma

Pandit Lallu Prasad Sharma was born in 1938 in Prithvipura, a small village in Rajasthan. He lost his father when he was still a child, and the family faced hard financial years. To help at home, he first took up Panditai — the traditional priestly work of a Brahmin household — and travelled to Kashi (Varanasi) to formally study Sanskrit, Jyotish (astrology), and Vedic ritual.

It was in Kashi that he became fluent in the shastra vocabulary that would later shape every deity he carved. He was eleven when he first picked up a chisel; the sculpting apprenticeship and the priestly training grew up alongside each other in the same young man.

At eighteen he moved to Ahmedabad looking for work and a chance to develop as an artist. From Ahmedabad he returned to Jaipur, and here the real training began — eleven consecutive years under two of the city’s most respected sculpture masters.

Shri Devi Sahay Ji Kishoriwala taught him the intricate iconographic detail that separates a devotional idol from a decorative statue — the way an eye is opened up, how the fingers of the vardamudra should fall. Shri Narayan Lal Ji Tiwari gave him the broader Rajasthani sculpture school tradition — proportion, drapery, the compositional grammar of a temple piece. Together, these two masters wrote the technical dictionary Pandit ji would use for the rest of his life.

The family firm traces back to 1950, but Pandit ji set up his own independent workshop in 1987, first at Girja Sadan, Khazane Walon Ka Rasta, and eventually at the current flagship at B-149 in the same lane. He picked Chandpole Bazar deliberately — this has been Jaipur’s marble artisan quarter for centuries, the address every serious buyer eventually finds their way to.

From that workshop came the pieces that would carry his name — moortis for homes and temples across India, exports abroad, custom commissions from collectors, and the two masterworks that would eventually bring him the Shilp Guru honour.