The workshop
The floor at Sitapura, photographed as it is: benches, kilns, the polishing room, and what we have not yet photographed.
Sitapura · By appointment
The atelier · Sitapura, Jaipur
Where the work is done
Every Gem Plaza piece is made in the house's own atelier at Sitapura, on the southern edge of Jaipur — cast, built, set, enamelled, polished and checked in one building. The house has manufactured its own work since 1988.
The floor
A working floor, not a showroom
Sitapura is an industrial estate. The atelier sits in a unit in the Gem & Jewellery Zone: strip light, benches in rows, a kiln room that is always too warm, and the smell of pickle and polishing compound. It is not a place built to be photographed, and it has not been tidied for these pictures.
What it gives you is the ability to correct things. When a setting sits half a degree out, the person who cut the seat is twenty feet from the person who noticed, and the piece is put right the same afternoon rather than shipped back to another city.
Three ways in
The craftspeople
Six disciplines under one roof — what a setter, a meenakar, a goldsmith and a polisher each actually do.
Six disciplines
Sourcing and provenance
What can be evidenced about where our metal, stones and work come from — and what cannot, stated as plainly.
Evidence, not adjectives
The disciplines
Seven disciplines, under one roof
CAD and casting, bench work, setting, meenakari, polishing and quality control. The people who practise them have generally done nothing else since they were apprenticed. Kundan and jadau in particular are Jaipur work: the technique does not travel well, and neither do the hands.
Read how each process is done →Where is Gem Plaza jewellery made?
In Jaipur, India. Gem Plaza designs, casts, sets, enamels, polishes and inspects in its own 10,000 sq ft atelier at G-1/21-23, Gem & Jewellery Zone, EPIP, Sitapura, Jaipur 302022, where more than 150 craftspeople work. Finished pieces are sold from the house's showroom at Khetan Bhawan on M.I. Road. Both are run by Gem Plaza Private Limited, founded in 1988.
Come and see it
The floor is open to visitors by appointment. An hour at the benches tells you more about a jeweller than any page on a website.