Estaa Fine Jewellery introduces recycled aluminium and upcycled diamond jewellery in its efforts to make sustainable jewels, taking a small step towards protecting the environment. Pratik Shah, the brand’s Co-Founder, talks about the concept that was realised during the pandemic; retailing handcrafted titanium jewellery through a Parisian gallery; and co-designing a contemporary handcrafted line for Les Muses Barbier-Mueller Museum in Geneva, Switzerland.
A pair of bright red starfish glistening with diamonds, emerald green kelp strands dotted with diamonds, and a pair of vivid blue fish with diamond-studded scales are earrings that pop out of the display shelves at Estaa’s store in Mumbai.
Neel, Estaa’s latest collection of baubles, inspired by aquatic life, is a game changer on two fronts. It is crafted out of recycled aluminium and anodised with vivid colours which makes it stand out of a crowd. Second, the collection uses upcycled diamonds in keeping with the reuse, recycle theme.
Born during the pandemic, the collection was sparked by a little girl’s urge to save the planet and her father’s promise to make something useful out of a Coke can instead of it landing up in a landfill.
It draws on the strong currents of conscious consumption and creating products that are sustainable and recyclable, a trend that is transcending sectors across the world and a key purchasing factor for the youth of today.
Estaa’s Co-Founder Pratik Shah talks about the origin and inspiration behind the collection that has made them pivot into a more environmentally conscious brand.
The brand, run by mother-son duo Swati and Pratik Shah prides itself on creating artistic, contemporary jewellery rooted in heritage that will sail well into the future.
How did the Neel collection come about?
For the last couple of years, we have been experimenting with various materials in our jewellery. We started with handcrafted titatium jewels three years ago and had a lovely response to it.
All our new clients are very young, and we have to evolve and present them with something unique. The idea to experiment with aluminium was born during the pandemic. It is infinitely recyclable. Just by anodising it, we can get some cool, bright colours like green, blue and red which we cannot get in any other metal.
How did you decide to work with recycled aluminium?
I have a Coke every day, and my daughter gets annoyed because she has learnt during her environment class in school that the cans just end up in a landfill. So, I told her that we will make something out of it. I watch a lot of DIY videos on YouTube every day in my spare time, and I watched this cool video of a guy crushing a Coke can and hammering it into a ball.
That when I decided to make jewellery out of empty cans. We made a few simple designs but couldn’t set any gems in it because the metal was too soft. It took us a year and a half to do the R&D to be able to set gemstones in aluminium. We used 100 % pure recycled aluminium for it.
As for the aquatic theme, I am a certified scuba diver. I happened to watch the award-winning documentary My Octopus Teacher on Netflix with my daughter during the lockdown and was inspired to create jewels from the Great African Seaforest in South Africa.
The jewels are created in recycled aluminium and set with diamonds and other precious gemstones. The earrings posts are crafted in 18-karat gold. Twenty per cent of the profits from this collection will be donated to the Sea Change Project, a non-profit trust based in Cape Town, dedicated to raising awareness of the beauty and ecological importance of South Africa’s Great African Seaforest.
When did you launch the collection?
We launched this collection with our good friend Arundhati De Sheth, who is a jewellery advisor. She had an exhibition at Pundole Art Gallery, Mumbai, in October 2021. We launched our collection at her show, and we were sold out – we are still fulfilling orders.
Since we use upcycled diamonds – either bought from our clients or from the market – it is taking a lot of time to source the right materials and make sure that is authentic. The collection is priced between Rs. 1.35 lakh and Rs. 2.5 lakh.
Will the sustainability angle extend to your other collections as well?
As of now, we still have our other gold jewellery collections which do not have a recycled element to it. We are trying to figure out a way to make this a part of our whole company. We are looking at fair mined gold, but it is tough to source it in India. Hopefully, in a year or two, all our materials will be recycled.
We are offering titanium, silver, gold and now, aluminium jewellery. We have used wood in the past. We want to do stuff that no one is doing.
What are you working on now?
We are working on a ceramic collection, and I have bought meteorites from dealers all over the world. There is a meteorite data base that tells you where and when it fell.
You have also co-designed a collection for Les Muses Barbier-Mueller in Geneva in the past. How did that come about?
Les Muses Barbier-Mueller has the largest collection of primitive art in the world. They also have a beautiful collection of ancient jewels from India, especially Southern India and Rajasthan, which were collected by the founders of the museum. An entire floor of the museum is dedicated to the jewellery collection.
The Barbier-Mueller family reached out to us through some common friends to co-design and create a more wearable jewellery line which takes its cue from the collection. The pieces are heavy and big – some of the earrings were five to six inches long. They are super contemporary with spikes, granulation and interesting Aztec and geometric patterns.
We scaled down the patterns, added our own elements and crafted them in silver with heavy 24-karat gold plating. It was exciting to work with a Swiss company for the first time. They were so particular about quality. It took us a month to figure out the gold plating. We used karigars from Zaveri Bazaar to manufacture the collection instead of approaching a commercial factory.
We worked with five to six karigar karkhanas. It added to the time factor, but we wanted to make sure that it was handmade.
The collection is retailed at the museum and on their website.
What was your biggest takeaway from the collaboration?
It brought to my attention things that we take for granted like our artisans. During the pandemic, we ran this project called Unity. We created a collection of titanium jewellery to raise funds for providing food these karigar associations during the first lockdown. The designs were simple enough for them to work from home. They worked with titanium, which was a new metal for them. They got paid for their labour and all the proceeds went towards providing food for them.
What are your plans for 2022?
The whole world has changed in the last two years. The way people look at jewellery has changed a lot. Our clientele, too, has got a lot younger.
Our offerings in different materials are picking up. It is exciting because we have so many more ideas that we want to work on, and we will be doing some cool stuff this year.
We launched at a gallery in Paris. They have been selling our handcrafted titanium jewellery. We are also creating aluminium jewellery, on a smaller scale for our European clients.
It is very nice to be in this space right now. Aluminium has given us the opportunity to make jewellery that is not that expensive but highly innovative. We have found the perfect balance between fine jewellery and extremely fashionable baubles. We will focus on creating artistic jewellery combining different metals, that’s where our strength lies.