Straddling between two distinct and diverse cultures is an art that Akshat Ghiya, founder of Tallin, a high-end couture jewellery brand, has perfected. He is a jewellery artist belonging to two worlds – Jaipur, India, and Padua, Italy, and so are his two starkly different collections – one that eulogises the Art Deco period and the other celebrates the soft, curvy, and sensuous forms. Over to the prodigious talent…
Akshat Ghiya is a chip off the old block. His artistic genes have been inherited by his father, who has been trading gemstones to global jewellery houses for over 40 years, and his mother, Namrata, a jewellery artist in her own right.
The young designer founded Tallin to create a new narrative that reflected a global aesthetic. The aim of Tallin is to make handmade fine jewellery set with unusual combination of gemstones and cuts and modernise traditional techniques. Akshat is helped by his mother, Namrata, to design jewels in their atelier in Jaipur.
Tell us about your family’s history in the world of jewellery business. What is the name of your parent company?
My father started selling precious stones in Italy over 40 years ago. The family today has a robust precious stones trading business, still based in Italy. My mother started making jewellery in Jaipur about 20 years ago, and today that atelier is where Tallin is based.
How did you arrive at the word Tallin for your brand? When was it founded?
In Sanskrit, Tallin means deeply immersed or absorbed. We founded Tallin four years ago, when we realised that we wanted to push our design aesthetic and develop a clear and original narrative.
You have wonderfully balanced your life between Padua and Jaipur. How do you manage to do that?
I think when one grows up living between two places, one assimilates that way of life. I feel at home in both places. I haven’t been to Italy since before the pandemic, and this is probably the longest time I’ve been away from “home.” I miss it terribly.
So, has the confluence of two distinct cultures influenced the design aesthetic of your brand?
I’ve been lucky to live a life where I’ve been able to travel and see many different parts of the world. I get inspiration from everywhere I go, including Jaipur itself. Sometimes our ideas come from everyday life. But to answer the question more pointedly, I do think that living a relatively global life has given me the ability to not hold on to any one specific perception of beauty, and that probably gives us the ability to create jewellery that isn’t specifically to one design lexicon. We make pieces that work at an Indian wedding in Delhi, as well as a cocktail party in New York, and an art opening in Paris!
Is all your jewellery handcrafted? If yes, what are the crafts that you employ and are most passionate about?
Everything we make is handmade, and that is an extremely important component to our brand and the ethos of our work. Not to say that machine-made jewellery doesn’t have its advantages, it certainly does. But we like to do things the old school way, and break boundaries within the parameters of “made by hand.”
How many artisans work for you? And have you adopted modern methods to manufacture jewellery? If yes, how?
We employ about 15 artisans, many of which have been with us since we began. It’s important to remember that we’d be nothing without them. We are always trying to push ourselves to be better, and to try new things, so in this sense we modernise our techniques all the time.
As a creative head, how do you conceive collections? What inspires you? Here, too, you balance the act by creating collections inspired by Art Deco and lines that are organic and fluid. We would like to know more about your thought process.
We don’t have seasonal collections, which is probably a different approach to most designers. We want our jewellery to be timeless and season-less, so we try not to confine our designs to collections. Of course, one sees evolution as our design practice develops, so even without collections our ideas and interests change and that shows in the work we make. We like to work under two broad categories, structured and organic or soft, through which we are able to explore these two very different aesthetics.
We would like to know more about the role of your mother in helping create collections. Do you work together on mood boards for the concepts?
My mother has the most incredible eye. We work together on design all the time, we push each other and don’t always agree, but we are most happy when we prove each other wrong and something we didn’t think would work becomes an incredible success.
Which gemstones are you inclined to use the most?
I love emeralds, but that’s personal. We incorporate diamond slices in many of our pieces, in India we refer to them as open setting polki. We like to play with different cuts of gemstones and incorporate them together in one piece. And of course, we love colour, so we work with different colours and shades of precious stones.
How did the pandemic affect your business and how did you manage to reinvent yourself ?
We were lucky in a way because Tallin, as a brand, is still very young. We used our time to try new things, to think, to re-examine our ideas and our stock. But we are grateful for this, our loyal clients remained loyal, we were also discovered by new clients, so sales were good. We aren’t in a rush. We want to make good work and take our time. The pandemic reminded us of this.
Do you have online and offline stores?
Offline for now. But some of our pieces can be bought online at some of our stockists. We hope to begin selling online soon.