More than five years after we’d featured the Pillsbury Necklace on this page, comes this pair of matched earrings in the form of lahari kanbalas.

This time it’s in season. The necklace was “o...

More than five years after we’d featured the Pillsbury Necklace on this page, comes this pair of matched earrings in the form of lahari kanbalas.

This time it’s in season. The necklace was “our interpretation of the very western cardigan clip or sweater guard/pin or shawl clasp that’s actually pretty old school jewellery, introduced in the 1950s to hold caplets and open-buttoned cardigans together using two brooch-like ends over attached alligator clips bridged with decorative chains.” But that jewel was introduced to you in August, 2017, in the middle of a rather humid monsoon. Today's is bang in the middle of winter.

It’s not as if the jewel needed matched earrings ; it could be worn with a whole plethora of kan-pashas or jhola-duls in similar workmanship. Also, because of the chains playing such a central role in the construct of the necklace — they’re what the eyes rest on — it can have matched earrings of any kind.

For this design, we chose to replicate in miniature the necklace in the lower arrangement of the kanbala. What you see is the four bichha-ball chains suspended between two inverted kalkas, still containing three kinds of karigari— reji-paktar, Manipuri, and, instead of katai, ball-work. The ball edgings are staggered differently on both sides of the chains with a difference in ball-sizes as well and a single large ball-drop is seen to hold centre-stage right at the bottom. This ball is reflected in the one hanging from the kalka pasha which falls between the plain bichha chains that act as suspender cables for the lower arrangement.

The paisley pasha is detachable and can be worn separately. When the kanbala’s desired, you simply have to affix the chain-kalka segment.

To its merit, the kalka-ball pasha as a stand-alone jewel may not be lavish but certainly is no pushover either. When worn independently, it functions well as an ornate ear ornament, both distinct and sophisticated. With the kanbala, it’s simply scintillating.

These are earrings that ingeniously use a trio of paisleys, some simple chhela chains, and a couple of ball-drops to create a matched masterpiece to a well-received but differently-ordered necklace, and at the same time to birth a rara avis of a kanbala that foregoes all the usual tropes of such an iconic ornament form and establishes a clear-cut idiom for itself. The Lahari Kanbala, with this Paisley Pillsbury model, has entered the pantheon of modern classics in handcrafted fine gold jewellery from Bengal by redefining what a true-blue kanbala can be.