Swat valley carvers work in Himalayan deodar cedar — dayyar — air-dried two or three years before a chisel touches it. Door leaves, mosque columns and window jaali are cut in deep relief and left bare: never painted, oiled at most. Hearth smoke settles into the cuts until the recesses go near-black, while the raised carving stays a lighter cedar brown where hands have rubbed it.

The system takes that surface literally. Every container is a recessed panel inside a carved frame, lit from the top-left and shadowed at the bottom-right. Corners stay square, edges carry rope-twist and chevron moulding runs, and the ornament is cut rather than drawn — rosettes, sun wheels, lotus, motifs older than the mosques they sit on.