Meenakari Collection

About

Meenakari is a craft with a name, which is rarer than it sounds Most finishes are just descriptions. Meenakari is a tradition, carried in India for centuries and associated above all with Jaipur and with Rajasthan more widely, in which colour is worked into metal rather than laid on top of it. It has always been applied to more than one kind of object: jewellery first, then ceremonial pieces, boxes, and figures like these. The word covers a family of related techniques rather than one procedure, and it is used loosely across the market today, on everything from serious enamel work down to a printed transfer. So it is worth being plain about what these are. They are metal animal figures carrying hand-laid enamel colour, in the meenakari manner and sold under that name. Where a seller is very confident about kiln temperatures and firing cycles, ask them how they know. We would rather tell you less and have all of it be true, so what follows is about what the pieces are like to own, which is the part that decides the purchase anyway. If you came looking for meenakari jewellery, we do not make it Worth saying early, because most people searching for meenakari want bangles, jhumkas, a necklace or a saree. We have never sold any of it. Nothing here is wearable. The one meenakari object we make that is not a figure is a brass pooja thali, and it sits with the rest of the pooja thalis rather than here. Meenakari trays, dry fruit boxes, coasters and key holders come out of the wholesale handicraft trade and are not something we stock either. The forms, and how to choose between them The peacock is the signature form and the one to take if colour is the whole point, because the tail gives the enamel more room to work than any other shape does. The elephant is the most bought, in two versions: plain, and with the ambari, which is the canopied howdah a procession elephant carries on its back. The ambari version is the more ornamental of the two and is usually what people mean w