ONCE UPON A TIME THERE WAS A JEWEL

A new initiative is charting stories of heirloom jewels owned in families for generations

- PRATIKSHA ACHARYA

Rita Vakil's first-ever tryst with jewellery goes back to her childhood days when vegetable shopping with her mother would quickly turn into a treasure hunt for unique pieces that they collected over time. With a keen eye for jewellery and a love for all things aesthetic that Vakil inherited from her mother, she has built a sizeable collection with time. But nothing comes close to her pièce de résistance, a choker adorned with jewelled peacocks, for which she collected pieces over many years. Every single piece is one of a kind and different from each other.

"The love for jewellery runs in my veins, and my mother ingrained it in me to the extent that to date, I have never bought any piece of readymade jewellery. Every single piece that I own has been a labour of love that I have either collected over time or created with the help of jewellers. I don't care about the value of it as much as I care about what looks good to my eye," she says.

Much like Vakil, jewellery in our country has seen a storied history. Be it a necklace that has been passed down through generations or something old that has been repurposed to fit the people of today, family jewels often have serendipitous tales surrounding them. Vakil's story is one of many such tales that are being documented by the Indian Family Jewels project that was started by Puja and Kunal Shah, who also spearhead fine jewellery brands Aurus and Moi.