& Silver Gold
Usha R. Balakrishnan VISIONS OF ARCADIA
THE AMRAPALI COLLECTION
Silver & Gold
VISIONS OF ARCADIA
For as long as Indians have adorned themselves, they have sought to wear jewels that conveyed beauty, power and status. Jewels are believed to provide protection, hope, luck and well-being. More than 40 years ago, two friends, united by a passion for the decorative arts, embarked on an exploration of these uni�ue jewels of India. �ey were motivated by the everyday jewels of the people in the villages—to discover the sources of their inspiration and to unravel the complex ritual of adornment that resulted in ornaments being fabricated for every part of the body, from the top of the head to the toes. What resulted were visions of Arcadia, leading to the creation of the Amrapali Collection of Indian Jewellery, one of the largest collections of pastoral silver jewellery in the world.
�e manifold communities that this collection represents come from di�erent religions, with linguistic di�erences and diverse cultural sensibilities, but the land that the jewels encompass is geographically contiguous. Beyond adornment, the Amrapali collection presents a vision of harmony with nature, with forms and motifs that draw upon nature and the cosmos, and materials such as shells, grass and bone. �ey exhibit the amazing technical expertise of the simple gold- and silversmiths. �is volume presents the jewels in all their glory, not as museum objects or as relics of the past but as a visual language communicating design, aesthetics, tradition and, above all, the artistic expression of adorning the body.
Silver
& Gold
the amrapali collection
Silver & Gold
Visions of Arcadia
Usha R. Balakrishnan
Mapin Publishing in association with Amrapali Museum
First published in India in 2025 by Mapin Publishing 706 Kaivanna, Panchvati, Ellisbridge Ahmedabad 380006 INDIA
T: +91 79 40 228 228 E: mapin@mapinpub.com www.mapinpub.com in association with The Amrapali Museum K-14/B, Ashok Marg, C-Scheme, Jaipur, Rajasthan 302001 INDIA T: +91 141 282 2700 E: info@amrapalimuseum.com www.amrapalimuseum.com
Text © Usha R. Balakrishnan Photographs © The Amrapali Museum except those listed below:
Alamy Stock Photo: pp. 38 (below), 50 (left and right), 54 (below-left and right), 82, 111 (above), 112 (above and below), 113 (above and below), 114, 118 (above and below), 122 (below), 127 (above-left) Freer Gallery of Art: p. 102 Getty Images: pp. 34 (above), 38 (above) Indian Museum, Kolkata: p. 74 Metropolitan Museum of Art: pp. 69, 77 (below) Museum of Christian Art, Goa: p. 105 (below) National Museum, New Delhi: pp. 77 (above), 106 Picxy.com: p. 111 (below) Shutterstock: p. 52 (above-right) Victoria and Albert Museum: pp. 77 (centre), 105 (above), 123
All rights reserved under international copyright conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
The moral rights of Usha R. Balakrishnan as the author of this work are asserted.
ISBN: 978-93-85360-88-6
Copyediting: Mithila Rangarajan/Mapin Editorial
Proofreading: Marilyn Gore/Mapin Editorial Design: Gopal Limbad/Mapin Design Studio Printed in India
CAPTIONS:
Front-cover: Haar (amulet necklace) , Rajasthan (See p. 21)
P. 2: Jhumar (head ornament) , Lucknow (See p. 27, below)
P. 5: Bulaq or kundu (nose ring) , Himachal Pradesh (See p. 218, right)
P. 6: Bazuband (armband) , Rajasthan (See p. 98, below-left)
PP. 8–9: Peacock feathers for Lord Krishna
Back-cover: Gamkharu (bracelets) , Assam (See p. 88 below, p. 92 below)
Note for the reader:
• The captions for images in the book are prefixed by a graphic indicating the position of an image on the two-page spread. The circles indicate the number of images on a spread while the grey circle indicates the position of the specific image on the page, within the spread.
• Images with captions that do not bear any figure number are supplementary images, additional to those referenced in the text.
FOREWORD
IN MATTERS OF TASTE, THERE IS NO DISPUTE
It all started on a hot day in May 1980; the temperature was hovering at 41 degrees Celsius and a loo was blowing across the city of Jaipur. A barefoot couple walked into the offices of Amrapali. The aged man was attired in a soiled white dhoti and kurta, and a cloth with red, yellow and pink stripes was wound in layers around his head. His wife was dressed in a bright mustard ghaghra-choli decorated with mirrors and embroidery, her red odhni draped over her head and drawn over her forehead to cover her eyes. A bulky potli was in the old man’s hands. He silently placed the cloth bundle on the table and untied the knot; with a loud clatter, a mass of silver scattered across the surface, and flashes of gold and sparkles of gemstones glistened through the heap. There were hair ornaments and earrings, necklaces and armbands, massive bracelets and anklets, and even amulets and toe-rings. That day, more than four decades ago, Rajiv Arora and Rajesh Ajmera embarked on their collecting adventure.
Captivated by the extraordinary beauty of those jewels, they set out on a journey, pursuing a passion that took them across the length and breadth of the subcontinent. They trudged through villages, befriended pawnbrokers and village elders, visited the workshops of the humble craftsmen and even scoured flea markets overseas; they purchased from dealers, bid at auctions and acquired from village goldsmiths and silversmiths. And, in the process, they have saved hundreds of pieces from the melting crucible, sustained craftsmen, stimulated creativity and forged the continuity of craftsmanship.
Chandan haar (necklace)
Gujarat, 19th–20th century
Gold, emerald, ruby, white sapphire
Amrapali family collection
Haar (necklace) Rajasthan, 19th–20th century Gold, mother of pearl, rubies, emeralds AF2013.03.106
Earrings Rajasthan, 19th–20th century Silver AF2013.02.163i, ii
Anwat (toe rings) Thar desert, Rajasthan, 19th–20th century Silver, copper AF2013.08.106i, ii
Bazuband (armband)
Shekhawati, Rajasthan, 19th–20th century
Silver AF2013.07.015
Karaala (anklets)
Udaipur, 19th–20th century
Rajput & Daangi community
Silver AF2013.10.049i, ii
GENESIS
IN THE BEGINNING, THERE WAS BEAUTY
Silver and Gold: Visions of Arcadia, The Amrapali Collection of Indian Jewellery explores the rich jewellery tradition of the Indian subcontinent outside the realm of the royal courts.
“Arcadia” refers to an idyllic region of mountainous landscapes, large valleys and plains of ancient Greece, where people lived in rustic simplicity, with plenty and in harmony with nature. While the Mughals and the maharajas have been eulogized as beacons of refined taste and their jewels have excited and preoccupied the imagination of the world, those of arcadian South Asia have been dismissed as “curiosities of craftsmanship,”1 and cast aside as crude and common. However, while royal courts and aristocratic privileges, together with their symbols of power, have long since vanished, it is in the thousands of villages across the subcontinent that the culture of adornment endures.
Among the rural communities of the Indian subcontinent, adornment with jewels and displays of wealth were art traditions of immense beauty but swathed in cultural complexity that few have studied or deciphered. More than any other art form, jewellery and its role, nomenclature, purpose and meaning have all receded in the collective memory, mostly forgotten, and, of late, more and more misremembered and distorted in stories conceived by salesmen to peddle their wares. Sadly, little has been documented and much has been lost, with oral transmission coming to a standstill as these communities settled down, urbanized and embraced modern technology.
For the nomadic, pastoral and tribal people, jewellery served many functions and was saturated with layers of social and religious meanings, suffused with deep symbolic
Pipla (head ornament) Himachal Pradesh, 19th–20th century Silver AF2013.13.036
fig 1 Plaque
Begram, Afghanistan, 1st–2nd century
Carved ivory
connotations. Through their forms, designs and decorative motifs, ornaments functioned as powerful visual representations of traditional thought systems and beliefs and have, in no small measure, been instrumental in the transmission of culture through time and space. Each piece of jewellery is a time machine that carries us into the past to reveal the unbroken flow of ornament forms and designs, and the persistent continuity of manufacturing techniques across several thousand years.
The ancient city of Begram, site of Kapisa, the summer capital of the Kushan empire, lay on the Silk Road not far from Kabul, connecting modern-day Afghanistan to India and China, and westwards to the Mediterranean, Egypt and thereon to the Roman empire. Archaeological excavations in the early 20th century yielded a range of luxury objects, including Roman glass, Chinese lacquerware and an array of ivory and bone plaques intricately carved with figures of bejewelled men and women (Fig. 1). The plaques have been attributed to the first or second century CE and are “generally thought to originate either from north-central or southern India.”2 They provide an invaluable visual reference of
fig 2 Baataa (ear plugs) Ajmer, Rajasthan/Gujarat, late 19th century
Rawat community Silver, lac AF2013.02.038i, ii
Baataa (ear plugs) Gujarat, 19th–20th century Silver AF2013.02.054
Kundal/Pokhani (earrings) Junagadh, Gujarat, 19th–20th century Silver AF2013.02.093
Pokhani (ear plugs) Saurashtra, Gujarat, 19th–20th century
Bharwad/Patel/Rabari community
Gilded silver AF2013.02.094
fig 3 Gajje addigai (necklace) Kerala, 19th–20th century Silver AF2013.03.012
ETHNOS
CARRY ME, CARAVAN
For long, the silver jewellery of the genre presented here has been termed “tribal,” implying that it constitutes the adornment of a segment of society that lies outside the social, economic and political mainstream. The Oxford Dictionary describes “tribe” as “a group of people in a primitive or barbarous stage of development.”1 As anthropological studies of tribes evolved, the description was modified to characterize “tribe” as a “notional form of human social organization based on a set of smaller groups (known as bands), having temporary or permanent political integration, and defined by traditions of common descent, language, culture, and ideology.”2 In the Indian context, accounting for the vast number of tribes and their complex origin stories, as well as their diverse and heterogenous organizational structure, tribes were described much more broadly, as “a large assortment of communities, differing widely in size, mode of livelihood and social organization.”3
There are more than 700 of these communities designated in India, from small foodgathering bands to vast populations of settled agriculturists. They are distributed across the subcontinent (Fig. 1), primarily over five geographical areas: “1) The Himalayan belt, comprising the modern states of Assam, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura, the hills of Uttar Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh, 2) Central India, encompassing Bihar, West Bengal, Orissa and Madhya Pradesh, 3) Western India, including Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Goa, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, 4) Southern India, spanning Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, [Telangana,] Kerala and Tamil Nadu, and 5) the Andaman, Nicobar and Lakshadweep Islands.”4 While their historical antecedents
Amulet necklace
Karnataka, 19th–20th century
Silver AF2013.03.028
volume. A few more examples will suffice to establish the correspondence. Male and female terracotta images from the ancient site of Chandraketugarh, in Bengal, dating to the Shunga era (second to first century BCE) wear a profusion of jewellery, the plasticity of clay allowing the artist to depict them in great detail (Fig. 2). The
neck-hugging collar necklace seen on the yakshini appears to be decorated with floral designs and its resemblance to the rigid silver torque— chamel from Uttar Pradesh (Fig. 3) is noticeable. Designs and forms of the bracelets from southern India (Fig. 4) and the anklets from Gujarat (Fig. 5) all look strikingly similar to the ones adorning the
fig 3 Chamel (necklace) Rampur/Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, 19th–20th century Silver AF2013.03.006
female figure; even the beads in the girdle around her hips bear close resemblance to silver and gold beads (Figs 6, 7) that are even today manufactured in different parts of the country.
Similarly, a yakshini statue from the secondcentury Shunga period, is adorned with a
fig 4 Kaikappu (bracelet) Tamil Nadu, 19th–20th century
Silver
AF2013.08.049
cornucopia of jewels (Fig. 8). The massive torque around her neck is clearly an early iteration of the hasli that became ubiquitous in the late 19th century (Figs 9, 10); even the flat collar necklace that adorns another yakshini (Fig. 11) who poses with a parrot on her shoulder, is seen in staggering variations on images in period
fig 5 Ghavla (anklet) Banaskantha, Gujarat, 19th–20th century
Patel community Silver
AF2013.10.031
fig 6 Kamarpatta (waist band) Maharashtra, 19th–20th century
Silver
AF2013.06.058
LEGACY
INSPIRING WONDER
There are multiple dimensions to the study of art. To dismiss some forms as archaic or primitive would be a great fallacy. The analytical tools required to grasp and articulate the beauty of jewels go beyond visual perception. It is not enough to explore the physical object, but rather the element in which the beauty of that object becomes manifest; similarly, it is not enough to investigate the source of inspiration, but rather the manner in which that awareness is expressed. It is in the sum of the parts that make up the whole that the life of the object lies, elevating a jewel from a decorative and functional object to a magical entity. Clothes, tattoos, scarification, henna and, most importantly, jewellery, are all enhancements that require the human body as a canvas. But among all these, jewellery is the most pragmatic, for jewels cannot be disassociated from their purpose. Neither dress nor tattoos, cosmetics or henna offers the thrill and narcissistic sensual pleasure derived from metal on skin, the sparkle of gems as the body moves and the illusion of invulnerability that jewellery offers.
The earliest ornaments were products of the hunt. Teeth, claws, horns, tusks, feathers and even the hair of animals were worn as ornaments, perhaps “motivated by the metempsychic belief”1 that the creature’s courage, fierceness and power would pass to the wearer, projecting man’s primacy over the animal. Nature provided an unending supply of raw materials—the brightly coloured feathers of birds, iridescent wings of insects, seeds that provided nourishment, vibrant and intoxicatingly perfumed flowers and even fruits, leaves and vines all became a part of human attire. The seas and rivers
Timaniya (necklace) Rajasthan, 19th–20th century Gold, white sapphires, emeralds, rubies pearls Amrapali family collection
tattoos and decorating the hands and feet with henna.3 His interpretation of alamkara as a thing of beauty is evocatively articulated by the seventhcentury poet Keshavdas in his Kavipriya (Poet’s Delight):
“A woman may be noble, she may have good features.
She may have a nice complexion, be filled with love, be shapely.
But without ornaments, my friend, she is not beautiful.
The same goes for poetry.”5 (Fig. 1)
In places of worship—temples, monasteries, and churches across India—adornment of images with jewels forms part of prescribed daily rituals (for Hindu temples, it is laid out in the agamas, the precepts of deity worship). Beautification of images is taken to a pinnacle at the time of festivals, when images or icons are draped in silks, decorated with flowers and elaborately adorned with jewels, particularly head ornaments, that are visible from a distance (Figs 2, 3), and taken out in public procession (Fig. 4). The custom stems from the belief that it is only when an image or body is clothed with beautiful textiles and adorned with jewels and flowers— alamkara—that it becomes visible. While Keshavdas’s lines were expressed in the context of the temporal, they are equally relevant in the realm of the metaphysical.
fig 3 Umlakh (turban ornament for groom)
Himachal Pradesh, 19th century
Silver AF2013.01.017
fig 4 Shaivite procession Tanjore, south India, c. 1830
Watercolour and gouache on paper
Victoria and Albert Musuem, London, IS.39.28-1987
fig 5 Infant Jesus in Canopy Bed Goa, 19th century Gold, silver, ivory, semi-precious stones by Antonio Cunha, under the commission of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation; ©Museum of Christian Art, Goa
Jewellery activates the mind, channelizes energy and conspicuously beautifies the body that it adorns.
Acknowledgements
Writing a book on a collection of silver and gold jewellery that spans the length and breadth of India was more rewarding than I could have ever imagined. None of this would have been possible without the vision and far-sightedness of Rajiv Arora and Rajesh Ajmera. To them and the Amrapali family, I cannot express enough thanks.
This book would not have been accomplished without my dear friend Pramod Kumar K.G. Thank you for inviting me to be a part of this “dream” project.
I extend my sincere thanks to Surbhi Mathur and Drishti Desai, as well as the entire team at Mapin Publishing Pvt. Ltd.
Finally, my deepest gratitude goes to my husband, Bala, for his support and encouragement in all my pursuits, and to my son, Aryadita, who is an unrelenting source of inspiration. He provided a touch of class to the book.
Dr. Usha R. Balakrishnan
CRAFTS, DESIGN & FASHION
the amrapali collection
Silver and Gold
Visions of Arcadia
Usha R. Balakrishnan
236 pages, 331 images
9.9 x 13.5” (252 x 343 mm), hc
ISBN: 978-93-94501-88-6
₹4500 | $75 | £55
Spring 2026 • World rights
Dr. Usha R. Balakrishnan is the Chief Curator of the World Diamond Museum and a pre-eminent historian of Indian jewellery. She is the author of several publications, including and has co-authored most recently one of the two-volume publication devoted to the fabulous jewels and seminal collection of paintings inherited by the Nizams of Hyderabad. Her curatorial projects include ‘India: Jewels that Enchanted the World’ at the Moscow Kremlin Museum, ‘Enduring Splendor: �e Jewelry of India’s �ar Desert’ at the Fowler Museum, Los Angeles, and ‘Shringara: Adornment’ at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS) Museum, Mumbai.
other titles of interest
Crafting Culture (forthcoming)
The Amrapali Collection of Indian Decorative Arts
Pramod Kumar K.G.
crafts of india
Handmade in India (third reprint)
Aditi Ranjan and M.P. Ranjan
