We wanted to share a brief glimpse into what goes into our painstaking handcrafted process, and how we care about the minutest detail!
- We always start with a conversation to get to know you and understand what you’re looking for.
- Then, we write down your preferences, the occasion, timeline and budget — called a brief. This document will guide our concept sketches, jewelry selection, and design process.
- If you want something from the Kria Jewels collection, that piece can be customized to your exact requirement and sizing.
- If you prefer something completely original, we begin with sketching out concepts, and exchange them with you to refine and narrow down what the final piece will look like. We will continue to iterate on the sketches until we have one that you are one hundred percent happy with and we’re completely confident about. This is one of the most important stages, as it’s about visualizing how the piece would look in real life based on a 2D paper sketch.Here’s how we created an original design for a client.Gaurav wanted to celebrate his mom’s 55th birthday. It was the first fine jewelry gift he was able to give her, so it was a special occasion to commemorate.
In India, we light up an oil lamp called diya for celebrations at home and religious festivals. The luminescence emerging from the teardrop-shaped lamp served as an inspiration for us to visualize a design for a ring.
- Once we agreed on the concept, the finalized sketch was sent to the craftsman and we discussed details, including type of metal, ring size, diamond sizes, diamond weight, and expected date of delivery, etc.
- The real handwork process starts here. In this vital stage, the craftsman starts to plan the piece. He begins drawing metal sheets to the right thickness to cut out shapes based on the design. Bengali craftsmen — residing in India for centuries — are gifted with the skill of making intricate beautiful pieces with gold, silver, copper. They put life into the most simple paper sketches and make them into real life models.
One of our team — a fourth generation Bengali craftsman — handcrafting the piece
- Based on the design and the weight expected, the design is either fully handmade, or some components are cast in wax. Wax, being a soft material, can be cut and scooped to make the finest and most intricate of designs and the lightest of products. With this ring, we decided to make the top in metal, and the solitaire mount and ring shank — the band that goes around the finger — in wax.
- The wax piece is cast in gold and all the elements of the ring are put together.
- The gold framework is ready with filing and polish for the next step: drilling holes for diamond setting. Based on the diamond sizes used in the jewelry piece, the right sized holes are drilled manually.
- Now, the gold piece is ready to be set with diamonds. The piece goes through the final round of filling, polish and then plating. This ensures that all the edges are smooth and finely polished. Plating is the coating done on the gold to get the desired contrast.
- This is followed by the next important stage of quality check, or Q.C. Though Q.C. is done at every stage — whether it’s ghat (mould), or procuring diamonds — this final stage is crucial to make sure that all the diamonds are set perfectly.
- The ring is sent for certification in the labs. [read more about certification here]
- Once certification is complete, the piece is packaged safely in Kria Jewels packaging and ready to be delivered.
We were honored to be a part of this special milestone for Gaurav and his mother.
Kria Jewels 