Jaipur has made jewellery for three hundred years, and almost all of it has been made within about a kilometre of where we sit.
A city built for this
When Sawai Jai Singh II laid out Jaipur in 1727, he built it as a grid of trades and brought craftsmen in from across northern India to fill it. Johari Bazar — jeweller's market — was one of the original blocks, and it has been doing the same job ever since. Ram Lala Ji Ka Rasta runs off it: a narrow lane of workshops above shopfronts, where the sound from the upper windows is hammers on steel stakes.
What actually happens in a day
A piece starts as sheet and wire. It is annealed soft over a flame, then raised and chased — worked from both sides with punches until the pattern stands proud. The setter takes over: warm lac is packed into the recesses, each stone bedded into it, and the metal collar worked over the stone's edge with a burnisher. Then the enameller, if the piece calls for meenakari, fires powdered glass into the engraved cells at around 800°C, one colour at a time, hottest first. Then filing, then three grades of polish.
Four or five pairs of hands, none of them ours alone, none of them using a machine that would let a piece come out identical to the last one.
Why we do not cast
Casting would be faster and far cheaper. It would also make every ring the same ring, and it produces a denser, deader metal that does not take a polish the way hand-raised silver does. The whole reason a Victorian Jaipur piece looks the way it does is that a person pushed the metal there.
Come and see
If you are ever in Jaipur, message us first and come up. There is usually tea. Find us →