I haven't ever been able to tie into my braid a mala of kamini-kusum in the seven years that the tree in my garden's been bearing, à gogo, bouq...
A Paroma pasha (not the actual one but the inadvertent design, with a prominent rose in it, which came to be known by that name thanks to the beautiful television personality, true-blue aesthete, a...
Warring sisters-in-law (wife vs husband’s brother’s wife) we’ve seen aplenty in popular Indian cinema, and the usual pyrotechnics resulting from their inevitable confrontation has been a source of ...
Now, there’s something to say here that we didn’t when we showcased the ‘guinea’ shell...
"Ami chakri kori London IBM e (tothyo projukti) r UK te thaki amar husband er sathe. Engineering pash korechi . . . Baba'r chakri sutre West Bengal er bibhibnno jaygay ghure ghure boro hoyechhi (Sa...
To start with, it’...
That’s the beauty of bespoke : when you love a jewel enough to commit to ...
In classical music the structure of a piece is built upon a theme that usually has a strong central melody which is later varied and repeated and is called a ‘variation’. After the first variation’...
Sometime in June, the venerated Cottage Industries held a textile exhibition at the Thyagaraja Hall where only handloom silks and cottons and linen were on display mostly as clothing and related ar...
If chronology were to be the only criteria for an understanding of the evolution of art, this Hansuli would be a neat coda to the wonderfully wild Kaan that preceded it. As a matched set, the chasi...
Amongst us Indians, the reasons for wearing precious jewellery can broadly be stated to be cultural, symbolic, talismanic, to affirm a social position, or for decoration, or to simply make us feel ...
I’m changing the narrative a little, this time.
You know how irate Lakshmi is with this whole business of my going and visiting my Aunt while she was sleeping. She thinks it a sly thing...
This is rare. And by that we don’t just mean the ornament — which is certainly unique in that it’s a near replica of a museum piece — but also the circumstances of its manufacture.
When a cli...
There’s nothing here you haven’t seen before and yet it feels new but in a strangely familiar kind of way — like someone you meet whom you know you don’t know but who, it somehow seems, you’ve know...
It hasn’t been a week yet since we gave you the Recap post on “Chokers Strung or Set With Pearls” and again we’re presenting one of the same though the ‘sameness’ here is of a different kind. There...
Sometimes we do too much.
From the form of this hansuli, you’ll recall easily our Grinling Gendaphul from December, 2018 that’s gone on to become something of a legend. The order...
A revival of what used to be a popular style thirty years ago, this tubular amulet necklace owes its second birth to Mrs. Gopa Das Gupta who not only ordered it in the given combination of black an...
The Juna Mahal choker of early 2018 vintage has seen great patronage. From it was drawn a pair of pashas in August last year. Much has been said about those, and the legend of a crumbling 13th cent...
On the night of our marriage I asked of him his umlakh. It wasn’t the silver kind commonly borrowed from bankers and money lenders. This had five beautiful panels in guinea gold, each depicting the...
In the brilliant qawwali from Barsaat ki Raat (of 1960) written by Sahir Ludhianvi, as the competition reaches its climactic conclusion, Bharat Bhushan sings :
“Jab jab Krishn ki bansi baaji,...
That the classic can’t be sultry is a sad misconception. Bengali wives in aristocratic homes, at the turn of the century, painting their buttocks with alta as enticement is a case in point. That pe...
If “The use of time is fate.” — as the English poet-dramatist George Chapman has claimed, we’ve either wasted time or conquered it in creating this jewel, thus sealing our destiny to be grim or glo...
The key to great bespoke anything is candid conversation. More so in the case of fine gold jewellery, not only for their enduring value but also because of the character you imbue them with over th...
This isn't a tie-up. It isn't some kind of cross promotion either. But we must, at the outset, credit the Oviya Design Studio in Fremont, California, and its founder Meenakshi Satyavolu Rangachary ...
A doctor is a caring person, the nature of the profession deems that to be unequivocal in the practice of it. But when you have a doctor who's a RabindraSangeet singer (trained by none other than P...
Iznik ceramics inform this stunning choker where in the traditional square centrepiece we see the local innovation of a fish-scale pattern (referencing the sea) rise up from the two ends and meet i...
A bicycle chain is hardly an inspirational object, unless used as a weapon –– a lash or whip –– by those who deem it be so because they find a certain delight in the machine...
In the wake of India's 74th Independence Day celebrations comes this jewel which, in the spirit of that momentous day, carries upon its robust frame the onus of expressing a freedom that has more t...
Five different kinds of virtuoso workmanship. A necklace in three sections held together with hundreds of bichha chains. A form taken beyond the usual by its deconstruction and final reassemblage i...
The fragrant flowers of the cork-tree bloom during fall and carpet the ground with tiny little stars. Spiritually significant as a symbol of transformation, we gather these four-petalled blossoms a...
Just as the Kakoli Necklace (shown here on 22nd November, 2014) is a fine and suitably complex example of reverse customization, so is this, though the resulting ornament is far, far different. Her...
We've known Mrs.Debarati Dutta-Cherukuri for three years now. Facebook brought us together. Or rather, our ornaments on Facebook did. Since then, we've had the occasion to make bespoke jewels for h...
Fine jewellery brooks no hierarchy. Earrings could be the sole ornament one wears to complement a formal attire. A necklace, though, is rarely worn alone.
This, here, is an afterthought. You w...
The nocturnal garden of love that comes alive with the rains, this necklace celebrates the erotic in chaste guinea gold, the ecstasy of passionate prem-bandhan immortalized in delicate delightful n...
lariat necklaces
held together
by delicate
tulle butterflies
encrusted with
precious gems or
kaleidoscope
enameling.
All in 22k gold.
Only for t...