Word: gems
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Taillac?who lives in Jaipur for half the year with her son Edmond, 5?has her atelier in Gem Palace, enjoys access to its craftsmen and buys most of her stones through the company. Her pieces?among them a much copied, chunky cabochon ring and a necklace featuring a "river" of cut stones?have been scooped up by fashionable women ever since stores like Colette in Paris and Barneys New York introduced them...
Jaipur, capital of the colorful Rajasthan state, is the world's largest and most diversified center for cutting and polishing colored gemstones. Last year India imported $83 million worth of colored gemstones and exported $193 million in finished stones, according to the country's Gem & Jewellery Export Promotion Council. And 55% of the world's diamond supply in value terms (85% of volume) is processed in India and traded in Bombay, now known as Mumbai...
...quality beads are just one Gem Palace specialty, and Kasliwal grabs several strands of garnets to demonstrate the differences. "This one is artisanal production, each bead carefully drilled, each one faceted by hand. The Tiffanys of the industry will buy this one, and the average worker could produce 20 or 30 beads a day," he says. A second strand looks duller and less uniform. "These have been tumbled in a machine and then finished. A worker can produce 800 of these a day." The artisanal strand wholesales for $70 to $80; the industrial one costs...
...next afternoon De Taillac directs a driver to the Nawab Ka Choraya neighborhood, jammed with gem shops and throngs of small-time brokers showing their packets in the street. "Did you notice I took off my jewelry?" she says, smiling. "They copy." How to describe the chaos?with monkeys swinging in and out of dilapidated, baroque façades, sugarcane presses spewing smoke, and dozens of men (there are very few women in sight) pursuing De Taillac. "Hallooo, halloo. You buy emeralds. You want Indian rubies?" they cry, tugging at her clothes, and when she stops to look over a handful...
HARI RAM SON, MOHAND CHAND & SONS, GOVIND GEMS, NP JAIN, RM BUMB read the signs on the shop stalls. Pitliya Jewellers has a table with a plastic washbasin filled with pearls. Jain families?members of an ascetic religious group that observes strict dietary rules?run the businesses; Muslims are the expert craftsmen. Later I notice a poster of Mecca in a workshop where four men facet lemon quartz in a weird green glow. Gauri Shankar Dangayach, production manager of one of Gem Palace's cutting units, leads De Taillac down several side streets with open gutters and into...