Women want meenakari

Backstory 

A technique heralded for generations, meenakari’s footprints are the most prevalent in regions of Rajasthan, Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh. But it isn’t only limited to jewellery. In West Bengal, enamelling as an inspiration is used on textiles like the traditional Baluchari sarees depicting scenes of Ramayana and Mahabharata, woven with multicoloured threads likened to meenakari’s jewel-like detailing. Back at the Zoya boutique in Kala Ghoda, Alice shares another fact about meenakari, “This collection is reversible. From whichever angle you look at the jewellery, there are details that will excite you. It’s like, the sign of great embroidery is that you should be able to wear it either way around.” 

Enamel, Tibet and femininity

An enamelled necklace, a ring and a set of earrings lined in front of us at the store, Alice navigates the anatomy of the jewellery, pointing out to the pictorial inspirations engraved on each. From Tibetan architecture of its capital city Lhasa, her memories of cherry blossoms to patterns of chevron, Thai silk textiles and indigenous birds. The jewellery is a conversation of the everyday and the occasional. 

The starting point for both Alice and Zoya was to tell a shared story. “My story is about the fact that most of the clients are women who buy for themselves. It’s kind of a new femininity that is both bold and delicate,” tells Alice, emphasising that the scale of her work is bold but the delicacy comes into the details. A distilled essence of undeterred feminism and self-reliance, renowned explorer (circa late 1800s) Alexandra David-Neel is reputedly the first European woman to enter the forbidden city of Lhasa in 1924. A subject of Alice’s admiration, Alexandra became a strong inspiration for the new collection, details seen through her lens of over a decade-long journey in Asia around India, Tibet, Sri Lanka, Japan and other countries. Her own voyage to India with jewellery as a medium of storytelling, Alice says, “I want to remind young Indian women why enamel is so beautiful. Why choose a solitaire diamond on a platinum band when you can wear this gorgeous poetry on your body?”

Mapping the handwork

“I feel, one of the mistakes that Western designers make when they come to places like India is that they bring these drawings that craftsmen have no relationship to at all. They don’t really understand it,” explains Alice about how the process of establishing a two-way communication with artisans is critical before the final product is made — one that aligns with their initial concept and the artisans’ cultural insights.

For the Zoya collection too, “I wanted to give out details that the artisan’s hand recognised like shapes and patterns, but take them from a slightly different place.” So the birds seen on the enamelled jewellery are not Indian peacocks but Chinese sparrows. 

But how do the myriad depictions and patterns find an equal eye? Colours of enamel. Breaking the typical codes of enamel like the primary tones, the collection lays out colours like aqua, pinks and deep rose. “We’ve used unique colours for this collection, which means for every piece to be consistent, colours were mixed at the beginning.” 

The real challenge however is how does one soften the force of technology over crafts — be out of touch with standardising and templatising.  Alice says, “I think, our eyes are becoming increasingly used to the crispness of CAD rendered bracelets on digital advertisements. And so you expect that level of crispness in everything, except actually it isn’t human.” She adds, “What we’ve always loved about mastercraft is the touch of the human hand. And, what I am really trying to achieve with this collection is that these pieces have that energy of the human hand.”