MODERN HEIRLOOMS

SUNITA SHEKHAWAT's namesake jewellery house is synonymous with heritage meenakari work. Earlier this year, however, the designer turned to a French enamelling technique, combined it with her Indian aesthetic, and gave us a timeless collection all by way of the humble bougainvillea flower.

- Ashwini Arun Kumar

Sunita Shekhawat urges us to hold any one of the 15 pieces of her limited-edition Bougainvillea collection against the light to truly experience the jewellery. When we hold up a ring with an intricately-detailed, three-dimensional pink bougainvillea flower with stamens and all, we see pink light shining through the petals. This, she reveals, is the magnificence of plique-à-jour, an enamelling technique that originated in the Byzantine Empire and flourished throughout France and Italy, especially during the Art Nouveau period. “As a jewellery designer, this technique has always been on my mind,” Sunita explains. But the inspiration to design her next collection with it came when she was looking at stained-glass paintings in one of the Shekhawati havelis. Though enamelling itself is not alien to the designer, things got challenging when it came to adapting this technique to an Indian design context.