The atelier · The craftspeople
The people at the benches
More than 150 craftspeople and designers work in the Gem Plaza atelier at Sitapura. The work is divided by discipline, and this is what each bench does.
How the floor works
A piece is made by hand, in order
Jaipur jewellery is almost always attributed to a house and almost never to a maker. The house is the name on the box; the work is done at benches, by people who each do one kind of work and do it all day. A setter sets. A meenakar enamels. A polisher finishes. Nobody does all three.
Every one of those benches is in the same building. The atelier at Sitapura is 10,000 square feet in the Gem & Jewellery Zone at EPIP, and every stage of a piece — drawing, model, casting, bench work, setting, enamel, polish and inspection — happens there rather than being sent out to a job shop and collected back.
Which bench comes next is decided by the piece, not by a schedule. Enamel is fired before any stone is set, because the kiln would destroy the stones. Jadau is set first and finished afterwards, the reverse of everything else in the building. Polishing is always the last hand a piece passes through before it is inspected.
The benches
Six disciplines, one floor
The setter
Cuts every seat to the stone that will sit in it, and closes the metal by hand.
A setter works to the stone in front of them rather than to a nominal size: the seat is cut with a bur to the measured girdle of that particular stone, and the claws are pushed and trimmed so they hold it without covering the crown. Bezel, channel and pavé are each their own discipline, and a setter tends to do one of them all day. Nothing here is glued and nothing is set by machine.
The kundan and jadau karigar
Works near-pure gold cold against the stone until the metal itself grips.
Kundan is the older Jaipur way of holding a stone, and it uses no claws and no adhesive. Refined, near-pure gold foil is worked cold between the stone and its seat and burnished, layer on layer, until the metal grips of its own accord. Jadau builds those settings into a lac-filled body, which is why a jadau piece is set first and finished afterwards — the reverse of every other bench in the building.
The meenakar
Fires powdered mineral colour into engraved gold cells, one colour at a time.
Enamelling is done on gold and it is done before any stone is set. The meenakar lays ground mineral colour into engraved cells with a fine quill and fires the piece in a small kiln, once for every colour, hardest-firing colours first — a later firing must never exceed the temperature the earlier one survived. White and green go in early; red goes in last. Sunken cells are refilled and fired again until the enamel sits level.
The bench goldsmith
Builds from sheet and wire what a casting could not hold.
Not everything is cast. Galleries, chenier hinges, box clasps, articulated links and open-back settings are built at the bench from rolled sheet and drawn wire, sawn and filed and formed over stakes, and soldered with graded solders so each new joint survives the next heat. The goldsmith fits the piece as it grows — testing spring, testing drape, checking how a necklace lies — and corrects it in metal rather than with a file at the end.
The polisher and finisher
Works down through the abrasive grades, then decides how the piece carries light.
Finishing is the last hand a piece passes through before inspection, and it is where a piece is resolved or quietly ruined. The polisher works through descending abrasive grades so each stage removes the marks left by the one before, then works the wheels around a setting rather than across it — a mop will lift a prong as readily as it will brighten a shoulder. Matte, satin, hammered and mirror grounds are all decided here.
The CAD modeller
Turns a drawing into a dimensioned model, and the model into a resin pattern.
Most commissions still begin as a hand drawing. The modeller is where that drawing is made buildable: gallery rails, prong seats, bezel walls, hinge and clasp mechanics, metal thickness and finger-size tolerance all settled before any material is committed. Approved files are grown on a resin printer as a build-ready pattern, so a client can hold a physical trial before anything is cast and a repeat order comes back dimensionally identical to the first.
See the floor itself
The workshop page shows the room these benches sit in and how to arrange a visit. The capabilities page follows a piece through the building, from the first drawing to the last inspection.