The contemporary majesty of Mughal-inspired jewellery

Krishna Choudhary established Santi Jewels in 2019. Today, he unveils his pieces – which are unique, produced in small numbers and often set with heirloom gems of museum quality – in a townhouse showroom near London’s Green Park. And since last year, Choudhary has also been presenting his work at the Maastricht iteration of the important art, antiques and design fair, TEFAF. Among this year’s Santi Jewels offering is a pair of earrings, shaped from rose gold and titanium in a rich brown colour. One old-mine rosette-cut white diamond per earring is matched with a total of 550 pavé-set diamonds.

The earrings’ shape is an inverted lotus, a motif symbolising purity, rebirth and transcendence, and one that came to prominence in Mughal architecture. ‘It’s a style of designing buildings of which there are many surviving examples across Jaipur, the city in which Choudhary’s family has been a household name in jewellery, art and artefacts for 10 generations. ‘Lotuses have been a major form of ornamentation in the Indian subcontinent. Whether it’s architecture, textiles or thrones, they have been incorporated to amplify beauty,’ he says. ‘These earrings have been derived from the stylistic version of Mughal lotuses from objects like a silver rosewater sprinkler and domes of Mughal mosques in Delhi called Jama Masjid.’

Elsewhere at TEFAF Maastricht, other jewellery high points this year included a 1970 yellow and pink gold cuff bracelet topped with three midnight blue amethysts by Gianmaria Buccellati, and a new necklace by Fernando Jorge called Tambour, made of yellow gold, carved ebony, onyx and many baguette-cut diamonds. While Munich-headquartered master jeweller Hemmerle debuted a new take on its Harmony bangle, a design first made in 1991. This latest interpretation is crafted in Mokume-gane, a 400-year-old Japanese technique that sees layers of silver, copper and gold fused together, then carved to reveal a pattern that resembles woodgrain.