A Sirkar & Co. Jewellers, 171/1A Rash Behari Avenue, India, KOLKATA (2026)

08/03/2023

Fine gold Bidri enshrined in pure guinea gold. A transformation through self-expression that preserves history and creates a beauteous new future of gold.
"We all stand for the values we believe in. For me, that would be, first, truth and beauty. When age-old handicraft is transformed by the touch of pure gold, its technique of making remaining loyal to its history, and then enshrined in guinea-gold jewels wrought by the very best of artisans from Bengal, both those virtues become intrinsic to the ornament. Such jewels hold in their heart the past, present and future with great veracity and meaningfulness. They can only make you immortal." — Brinda Sirkar
(The Gold Bidri necklace and earrings shown are the ones Brinda was wearing in the short video posted here early last week)

08/03/2023

Fine gold Bidri enshrined in pure guinea gold. A transformation through self-expression that preserves history and creates a beauteous new future of gold.
"I believe the merger of history and individual expression best manifests itself in bespoke fine gold jewellery. That's why I create each piece as a unique ornament, to be as timeless as you are." — Brinda Sirkar

06/03/2023

Modern Jewellery — Tatty Devine
Holi's round the corner and the festival of colours must find resonance in the world of jewellery, especially that of the modern kind. Today, we bring you a brand that, if anything, is a riot of colours, messages and styles. There's a lot going on here, and most of it's quite fabulous. Prepare to enter the polychrome universe of Tatty Devine:
Rosie Wolfenden and Harriet Vine met as students at Chelsea College of Arts in 1996. After craft-filled childhoods, they customised clothes sourced in charity shops for gigs and nights out and, as the Tatty Devine creation myth goes, stumbled on a pile of leather sample books by the bins outside a furniture shop.
Months later Harriet used some of the leather to make a cuff and, buoyed by the compliments it received, decided to create more and sell them on a stall at Camden Market in London.
Later, Rosie’s homemade headband caught the eye of a Vogue stylist. The stylist was sourcing vintage clothes; Rosie was the vintage-clothes shop’s part-time assistant. After a collection of accessories was made at break-neck speed that weekend, one of their cuffs ended up in Vogue’s millenium edition, worn by the model Erin O’Connor.
All Tatty Devine jewellery is designed and handmade in house by a small, skilled team of makers with a passion for art jewellery. They work hard to ensure that every piece boasts the quality and unique stamp that's become synonymous with the label.
They create around 300 new jewellery designs every year, from trend-led capsule collections to limited edition masterpieces, showcasing their advanced techniques in acrylic jewellery design and production. Also, they are slowly moving their acrylic supplies into recycled acrylic as they use up the stock on their shelves. In addition to their permanent classic collection, collaborations and their seasonal collections now feature ornate designs in highly collectable numbered runs. All Tatty Devine jewellery is still designed and handmade in Britain.
At Tatty Devine career development is encouraged, from making to management and everything in between. Of course, they’re keen to fight the Gender Pay Gap, and pay the London Living Wage.
Tatty Devine jewellery carries a strong feminist message and is known for making a statement and starting conversations.
Jewellery is a very powerful way to spread messages and Tatty Devine loves to challenge what jewellery can be and do. Through its jewellery and campaigns Tatty Devine empowers its customers by giving them a medium to be political. Proudly British, as Tatty Devine continues to grow Harriet and Rosie are sticking to their principles of keeping production in the UK. And whilst business is serious, they say ‘above all, we’re always motivated by fun’.
(Article and photos : inews, tattydevine official site, joytotheworld blog.)

06/03/2023

Fine gold Bidri enshrined in pure guinea gold.
A transformation through self-expression that preserves history
and creates a beauteous new future of gold.
"It's from history that we draw the greatest lessons even in art, and so we create new and beautiful things not by erasing the past but by sculpting it and including it to suit the future." — Brinda Sirkar

04/03/2023

Jewellery Quiz :
This one's an out-of-schedule and quite topical at that. In the picture, what you see is the Karnataka tableau at the Republic Day parade of 2011 in new Delhi. What is highlighted has resonances with the 'Brinda Sirkar for A.Sirkar' inaugural collection of unique fine gold jewellery.
Can you tell us what the theme of the Karnataka tableau is?

03/03/2023

Fine gold Bidri enshrined in pure guinea gold.
A transformation through self-expression that preserves history
and creates a beauteous new future of gold.
"Tradition is the basis for redefining the future . . . " — Brinda Sirkar

03/03/2023

A war ends, another starts. In a time of invasions — pestilential, political or otherwise — we pray for your long life, and that you may love and be loved long as well. As for bliss? — it's always a tall ask, and priced accordingly. But may such bliss be yours that's enduring and the price exacted for it merely reasonable.
In hope of peace and healing, we remain.
(Picture from a K.J.Holmes contact improvisation workshop)

02/03/2023

Radhika Kaan Jhumka
"Radhe! Firmly reject this shrewd son of the king of Vraja, O immoral girl! Listen! Don't be weak! I'm saying it for Your own good. Don't submit to Him!"
Such advice from her loyal sakhi Lalita may not have fallen on deaf ears but did precious little to alter the course of the love to end all love or, if you will, the love above all love.
This karna-veshtana is evidence that the modern-day Radhika Gupta — for whom her husband, Tridib, got the jewel made bespoke for their anniversary — is as much in love with and is equally loved by her life partner as the Radha of Indian mythology.
In Dubai the two of them, with their fiercely talented daughter Dhriti, have now made their home after Tridib’s international finance-management career saw them travel across four countries through the last ten years. That blazingly successful stint makes Radhika just as much Mahalakshmi for she, no doubt, has been the greatest contributor to her husband’s remarkable ascension. A graduate first-class and a B.Ed to boot, Radhika has not only been a popular teacher but a guiding force as well behind her daughter’s emergence as a brilliant pianist.
This kaan was ordered a year ago. Taking its design cues from the Kumudini Kaan-Jhumka of 2017 vintage, it differentiates in its meticulous detailing.
A single enlarged halud-chameli takes pride of place surrounded by sweet sandhya-malatis and a rose sprig. The anfractuous floriated infill is protected by a line of naksha-topas which again is bordered by a continuous row of water snowflakes (this feature’s from the earlier jewel). All of this is framed by an uninterrupted edging of orbs with tin-karai finials.
The jhumka, with its two-tiered ball border and single ball-jhur fringe is a perfect match for the kaan, it’s domed form decorated with scrolling naksha the flowers and foliage of which resemble those of the kaan but which have deliberately been varied ever-so-slightly to ensure the jhumka succeeds just as spectacularly on its own with any pasha of your fancy.
This is not the stuff of clinquant romance. Guinea gold jewels such as these connote love everlasting of the kind that makes spiritual the very act and action of love-making. The ornament covers the entire ear and, as the karna-veshtana, becomes part of Radha’s floral adornment.
Realised entirely in virtuoso pierced-naksha, the Radhika Kaan-Jhumka is for all you who believe in transcendental love and are willing to submit yourself to its gloriously liberating, even transformative, force. It’s what made a mischievous Radha Gupta become the beauteous ‘Radhika’ — a name given her by her devoted husband in pure affection, and by which she allows only him to call her.

02/03/2023

There's no way we can determine the black and the white of handmade fine gold jewellery. The coordinates that determine the possibilities just don't exist, unlike in the case of those that are churned out by machines or made the industrial division-of-labour way. Size is also an indeterminable quotient. Whether it's art or not is never determined by the measurement of the canvas, and those who price paintings (and painters) by square-inch are crass thickos. They fully deserve to have bad work by big-ticket artists who've sold their soul to commerce on their living room walls as lurid displays of wealth and pretend-sophistication. Bespoke gold jewellery — even the smaller pieces, entirely wrought by hand — speaks an altogether different language : that of good taste, deep sentiments, and a certain willingness to adorn oneself with what's precious, personal and of enduring value. Price is a necessary thought that occurs with the question of outlay but is hardly the be-all and end-all determinant of whether or not to get made a jewel that's so intimate as to be inseparable from the very soul of us. These two pendants are of precisely such a nature.
Pearly Paraselene Pendant
The first is a mother-of-pearl jewel where a slim frame holds the iridescent oval moon in place while a fine filigree fringe lace skirt covers a good part of it like a revealing veil. Entirely composed of faceted flat wires, the arabesque is intricate and embedded with pearls, and the hemline, undulating and with a border of single-ball jhurs, is frivolous without being naughty.
Note how the plain loop has a single pearl tied to its base to let it seamlessly integrate with the jewel's prevailing idiom. A pearly pulchritudinous paraselene pendant, this one, and made for a young university-professor who loves her shonar goyna and has a special affinity towards mother-of-pearl because of which she specifically commissioned this jewel. We made it like this so that she has ample fun wearing it.
Black Barfi Borderwala Rani-Guinea Pendant
A Queen Victoria guinea that'd been in the family for generations was given to us to make into a locket. The call was to shun the conservatism of the era and go baroque on this but history proved too strong to allow such waywardness and we settled into a luxe framing that referenced Victoria's 'veiled head' phase, the last of her sovereign imprints, in fact, before she passed in 1901. This 'old' Queen aspect of the coin and the fact that she'd been using jet jewellery quite a bit after Albert's demise led to the use of black in the enamelling. The detailing was kept simple : a continuous sabu-dana border encloses a series of polished gold and black-mina barfis, the former with a cinnamon roll on each that's been laid diagonally. The gaps between the diamonds are filled using single orbs, but the whole frame's still chaste open-work.The broad loop, just to maintain synonymity with the frame, has three diagonal flat wires soldered on it.
The result : a very simple but distinct framing of a classic guinea that has terrific graphic qualities, not least because of the repetitive motifs but also because of the contrast of black to natural gold.
As different as a cheque is from a Czech, these two pendants. But the similarities are striking, too. In both, the thought behind the jewel comes from a foreign article that has to be incorporated in the design in a way that makes them inseparable, i.e. the design remains incomplete without the article.
As such, the Pearly Paraselene and Black Barfi Borderwala Rani-Guinea Pendants, literally one black and the other white, show that in their heart of hearts there is no black or white — just a radiant humaneness to jewellery thus wrought by hand with utter sincerity and a flourish of real sentiments.
The universality of their beauty is left to you to judge.

01/03/2023

Sampanna
In August last year when we released the Gulistan Choker there weren't any matching earrings to it. It's heartening to know then that when at last a pair was made, it was a pasha and not a dangler or kanbala or jhumka, and was created bespoke for a young lady who'd selected Gulistan and felt a companion piece for the ears was imperative.
That pashas are no longer considered to be fuddy-duddy accessories is evident from the fact that we've been doing an increasing number of them as stand-alone jewels or matched to necklaces of various kinds — all for young girls, and many of them to-be brides. That alone is a very comforting thought — that the timelessness of certain kinds of fine hand-wrought jewellery is now being acknowledged universally. There's hope for Bengal jewel-craft as a valuable decorative art form, still.
The pasha's a simplification of the Gulistan choker's primary articulation of a rose garden — there the Gulistan of Sa’di of Shiraz reimagined as the poet's fragrant golap bagan : "rich with meaning, fragrant with wisdom, and glorious in its articulation of a ‘Gulistan’ as the paradise we choose for ourselves when we walk the path of truth and beauty." — that here becomes a guldasta of three fresh roses mixed with acanthus sprigs and sundry vines. There's no more space for further articulation and the chased rope and ball border both frame the bouquet well while the meticulously crafted pierced naksha makes certain the roses can be smelt.
There's merit in that. The young — like Sampanna for whom this jewel was made and after whom it's named — are virtuous. They've woken up and smelt the roses. And then chosen to immortalise them in pure guinea-gold as a recherché jewel. In doing so, they've, knowingly or unknowingly, immortalised themselves.
The start of many a family's history can be traced back to a single extraordinary goyna. Sampanna is of just that kind.

A Sirkar & Co. Jewellers

08/03/2023

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