The Designer's Trail
Twelve places, twelve pieces. From the frozen valleys of the Himalaya to the stone city of Hampi — the roads I walked, and the jewellery they became.
How a piece is born
A place stops me. I sit with it until it gives up a shape. Then I carry that shape home, and the studio spends monthsturning a single morning into something you can wear.
Part One
Snow, water, and the slow blue of high places.
Sissu · Lahaul
Sissu in deep winter is two things at once — ice that refuses to move, and the dark creeper beneath it that refuses to die. I wanted both in a single necklace: stones cut like river-frost, threaded through vines of green, the cold and the living holding each other up.
Pangi Valley
Few roads reach Pangi, and the ones that do close for half the year. What stays with you is the glacier — pale blue, shattered into facets no jeweller would dare invent. So I did not invent. I set the stones the way the ice had already cut them: angular, unrepeating, and let the light do the rest.
Srinagar · Kashmir
Every shikara on the water is a moving garden — lotus and vine carved into the wood, painted in colours that have no business surviving the fog. I lifted that garden onto the ear: two slender boats cradled in lotus pads, buds rising as though the water were about to bloom.
Dal Lake
At first light the vendors row out — a boat stacked with apples and marigolds sliding through grey water, the only colour for a mile. I built the pendant around that memory: a wheel of every hue closing over lotus blooms, so one piece carries the whole lake waking up.
Martand · The Sun Temple
Martand has stood roofless for twelve centuries, and still every arch is aimed at the sun it was built for. I gave it back its light — the colonnade struck in gold, a burst of rays behind, ringed in silver water the way the ruin is ringed by its valley.
Part Two
A ruined capital of stone, patience, and impossible detail.
The Stepped Tank
Hampi's Pushkarani is a pyramid turned inward — black stone steps folding down to a square of still water, perfect from every angle. A photograph flattens it; a pendant could hold its depth. I tiered the diamonds the way the masons tiered the stone, each layer smaller, drawing the eye to the centre.
The Stone Chariot
Hampi's stone chariot has wheels carved to turn, and for five hundred years they have not needed to. That patience is the whole idea. I set the chariot inside a pendant of coral, one diamond-set wheel catching the light — a monument small enough to wear, old enough to outlast us.
The Lotus Mahal
The Lotus Mahal cools itself with arches shaped like unopened buds — engineering disguised as a flower. I shrank the whole pavilion onto a ring: the tiered dome as its crown, the scalloped arches running down the shank, so a queen’s summer palace sits on the hand.
The Tungabhadra
You cross the Tungabhadra in a coracle — a round basket of reeds that has no business floating, and does. I cast that basket in gold, wove its lattice by hand, and set river-pearls around it like the bubbles that rise when the oar dips. The lightest thing on the water, made to last.
The Elephant Stables
Eleven great domes stand in a line, each once home to a royal elephant — power kept under perfect arithmetic. I hung three of those domes as a single pendant in antique gold, and let a small elephant of green jade carry the pearl at the end: guardian and gift in one.
Vijaya Vitthala
Along the Vitthala corridors, every pillar carries a yali — a lion-beast set there to guard what the kingdom loved. I raised one onto a pendant, seated on an ornate column of gold and malachite, a black-jade briolette hanging beneath it like a drop of the temple’s own shadow.
The Musical Pillars
Strike the slender pillars of the Ranga Mandapa and they answer in notes — a single block of granite carved into an instrument. I could not carry the sound home, so I carried the shape: seven fluted columns gathered around one, a lotus at the crown, ghungroo at the hem, coral at the base for the beat.
The trail continues
Twelve roads, twelve pieces — and the trail is far from over. Bring me a memory, a place, a feeling, and we will find its shape together.
