Gems And Jewellery

"We have unearthed craftsmen. In one particular case, we hired three generations of craftsmen to work on the jewellery. The older generation was not even making jewellery anymore, but we found him in Rajasthan and got him to work for us."The designs are mostly "kundan and meenakari"- inlay work common to Rajasthan. "The interesting thing about most 'kundan' and 'meenakari' is as many as five craftsman worked on one single piece. One made the mould, another set the stone, one inlaid the pearls and others made the colourful 'meenakari' work. So, each jewel takes a long time to craft. It's not factory-made. The jewellery was handcrafted."Women used to wear large thumb rings with mirrors so that they could see their faces in the mirror. Now, setting a mirror in that mould is a special skill and it doesn't exist today. So we had to find craftsman who could recreate it," Parida said.Tanishq has no plan to sell these jewels.
"This is a labour of love. Second, it's not wearable because the jewellery is heavy. We have launched the prêt collection which is inspired from the 'Jodhaa Akbar' line but as of now, we don't intend to sell it."Talking about future plans, Parida said: "We are looking to do films, but only those where jewellery is integral to the film. We don't want to be the part of the props. We want to be the design leaders. Our experience while working on 'Jodhaa Akbar' was fantastic."