Kundan: The Word to Add to Your Jewelry Thesaurus

You will probably know the word Kundan if you are from India, you work with jewelry or are a jewelry enthusiast curious about different jewelry styles and making. If you are not any of the above and still know the word, good for you, because you belong to a very select group.

Now, let’s assume you are reading this, you have never heard of the word Kundan and are wondering why you should be interested.

For one, it’s always good to learn something new. You never know where it takes you.

For another, there are about several pieces in our Silver & Glass Collection carrying the word Kundan and it will come in useful to know what they are.

So what is Kundan?

Well, now that you have asked, Kundan actually means pure sparkling gold but it has become a word to describe a technique used in India for setting gems with gold foil in a metal base.

The technique results in a distinctive shape resembling a mosaic or paved setting. While started in the palaces of Rajasthan using gold and diamonds, there are now different gems used as well as different material such as silver and glass Kundans.

So, here it is. Kundan, your word for the day.

Dilli Haat Market :The Bazaar for Beginners

If Delhi is your first stop on a visit to India, you will probably be wondering where’s the colourful India you had been hearing about.

Going around New Delhi in your hired taxi or Tuk Tuk or walking in Old Delhi among the bicycles, rickshaws and hundreds of people going about their work, you won’t see many bright colors.

It depends of course on your perception of Delhi and your expectations, on what you have read and had been told, but at the end, your eyes will be darting all around, your five senses will be on full alert, and your energy will be drained when you are in the traditional bazaars of Delhi ; even if you are a seasoned shopper and haggler.

Not so in Dilli Haat Market in South Delhi. Built in 1994 to give artisans from around India a chance to sell their work, the Dilli Haat open air market is not to be compared to the old traditional bazaars of India with their sheer variety, size and long history. Still, it is a refreshing, car and motorcycle free easy break from the extremely busy and sometimes nerve racking old bazaars.

The stalls in the Dilli Haat Market are rented on a rotating basis for 15 days intervals to craftsmen and artisans from different regions of India. The idea is to give a ‘village’ market feel and look to the place. Stalls of food reflecting the different flavors and complex names from Gujarat, Maharastra, Jaipur, Kerala and other areas abound. This is not top Indian cuisine of course, but there you can at least learn about the different regional food and pick up some Indian spices that you won’t know how to use but will keep your suitcase smelling of Delhi all the way home.

Painting For A Living

Warli. Madhubani. Gond. Patachitra. What????

If you are in Delhi and visit the Dilli Haat Market, you’re bound to see the many stalls selling paintings of birds, peacocks, gods, goddesses, elephants, trees, moons, suns, fish and others.  Hundreds of paintings in each stall, small, big, framed or not, hung up like a school art project, stacked or strewn around waiting for someone to start picking.

It’s not a school project though. This is, in fact, a business.  Mostly a family business and even a community or village business.  The sister and the aunt paint, but they don’t speak English or the wife paints, and the husband takes care of the selling. They come from the different states and areas of India carrying with them their own or their families’ paintings to ‘show and tell’ for 15 days in the Dilli Haat Market in Delhi.

Someone inevitably speaks some English and will tell you that these are hand painted on handcrafted paper using cow dung and rice soot.

Cow dung? Isn’t that taking organic too far?

Now before you start twitching your nose with imagined unpleasant scents or beaming with delight (depends on which part of the world you come from ; if you are Lebanese like me, you might be doing the first.  A European will probably appreciate the natural touch). Anyhow, before you do any of these, you should know that this is meant as an up-sell and as I was told by more knowing persons afterwards, it is most of the time not true.

Painting with burnt rice soot and cow dung on mud plastered background is an interesting story though and if not true for most of these paintings; it is true for what was used in the original work done by the same tribes in India for which these paintings are named.

Dilli Haat is of course, not the place to go to if you want original pieces by specialized artists, but it is a good place to start for an introduction to these different tribal art types.  And it’s a great place to see how people can make a living out of art even if it is sometimes only simple drawing and colouring.

If you are already just a little bit interested, check our current collection of Madhubani and Warli paintings, still growing and dung free, and look out for future posts for more on tribal art from India.