Hollywood Goes Gaga over Amrapali's Ancient Designs San Leandro India West
07.01.10
An Indian jewelry company, named after a beautiful courtesan from the time of Buddha, has seduced Hollywood.
Sandra Bullock showed up for a screening of “The Blind Side” wearing their enormous hammered 22K gold hoop earrings. Marisa Tomei spoke at a press conference wearing brilliant blue Peruvian opal earrings and a diamond bracelet, while Scarlett Johansson signed autographs at Comic-Con wearing an 18K yellow gold, silver and diamond flower ring on her left forefinger.
What did these beauties all have in common?
They were all wearing Amrapali Fine Jewelry, the creation of a pair of Rajasthani artists who have spent the last 30 years honing gold and gemstones into dazzling combinations that blend the best of Indian classic designs with cutting-edge modern chic.
Company founders Rajesh Ajmera and Rajeev Arora, based in Jaipur, are passionate about their art. They met while both were young postgraduates of ancient Indian history and first worked together to found the Chandrika Foundation, which is said to hold the world’s largest collection of Indian silver jewelry and has exhibited works in six different museums and art galleries around the world.
The duo wanted to bring India’s jewelry arts to a wider audience, and so they established Amrapali in 1978. By applying methods used by ancient craftsmen and deliberately downplaying some of the more fantastic and ornate styles loved in India in favor of subtler Western tastes, Ajmera and Arora have found a formula for success.
Amrapali jewelry is regularly seen at glitzy Bollywood events and on stars there such as Frieda Pinto and Tabu; Pooja Bhatt and Ila Arun showcased an Amrapali ethnic collection not long ago at its store in Mumbai.
Some of their most popular, and most-photographed, works seen here in the United States incorporate rose-cut diamonds, which are lightly faceted and have a flat bottom so that they appear twice as large as brilliant-cut diamonds
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