There is a delightful informality, a raw appeal in Rashmee Pai Seth’s hand-beaten and handmade textured gold offerings sold under her brand Kanackam.
Bespoke jewellery designer and goldsmith Rashmee Pai Seth’s Instagram page for her brand Kanackam has unique, custom-made creations with polki, gems, diamonds in gold and silver filling up its profile. What sets the brand apart is Seth’s use of textures in her plain gold creations. The hand-beaten and filigreed jewellery speak volumes about the effort and the long hours that have gone in to handcrafting these masterpieces. The process of creating jewellery from sketch to the finished product is what excites Seth the most.
A bold and beautiful diamond-studded cuff appeared in the National Diamond Council’s first India-only trend report alongside legacy brands, which was released in March 2021.
A self-taught jewellery artist, Seth’s clientele has grown steadily and organically, through word of mouth over the last seven years. It has expanded from family and friends to include high profiled individuals. She doesn’t like talking too much about her custom creations as she feels that the finished piece is only for her clients to enjoy but is more than happy to talk about the jewellery crafting process.
We get Rashmee Pai Seth to talk about her brand that celebrates six years this June.
How did you become a jewellery designer?
I am a graphic design and photography graduate from the J.J. School of Art, Mumbai. After graduation, I worked as a web designer creating flash websites, and later with the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Delhi as a graphic designer for all their art and marketing deliverables amongst other jobs.
When my mother-in-law passed away in 2013, I inherited some of her jewellery. While there were many gorgeous pieces, there were a few that didn’t appeal to my sensibilities and so, when my then three-year-old son was old enough for play school, I went to Zaveri Bazaar to have it valued and see if I could find a karigar to turn it around into jewellery that better suited my taste and liking. After a year of experimentation and long hours of working with different craftspeople, I was still not entirely pleased with the outcome. It was then that I decided to take to the hammer and bench myself.
By this time, I had observed quite a few karigars working on varied processes and felt confident to experiment on my own. So, I made my first stack of beaten gold bangles and soon after, my sister Nisha and my dear friend Hema, proprietor of Amba Weave, a hand-woven textiles brand, ordered sets for themselves. Their delight and support was instrumental in pushing me to create my own brand.
My mother came up with the name Kanackam, which means golden in Tamil. It worked because gold is by far my favourite metal to work with. I love creating custom pieces, innovating and putting my own spin on jewellery, a craft that spans centuries. I also like refurbishing old jewellery.
Do you craft the jewellery yourself?
Up until 2018, I was on my own. I hired my first employee in December 2018 and my second one at the end of 2019. All three of us thoroughly enjoy being entrenched in the creative process. All my basic metal works , melting, soldering, sculpting, etc., are done in-house. I’m also in the process of better equipping my studio to be able to do more.
Do you prefer working on contemporary or traditional designs?
I love spending time crafting the pieces. For me, it doesn’t matter whether a piece is contemporary or traditional, it’s the technical and mechanical aspects of the design and the manufacturing processes that interest me. I love the conceptualising, sketching out a design, working out the kinks and adjustments and finally, taking it through to its finished avatar.
What are you working on at the moment?
Since the pandemic, I have been getting a lot of requests to re-make and re-work old antique jewellery sets. I am currently refurbishing a kundan necklace that is over a hundred years old and two others that my client inherited from her grandmother. There are a few other projects in the works.
Since I am self-taught, it is wonderful to be able to analyse and admire the workmanship of the past. There’s a lot of new tech out there and so much of it is employed in making new kinds of jewellery, but there’s something about the ‘old’, something almost raw, that appeals to a more emotional aspect of me — of staying connected to the past that keeps me firmly rooted in the principles of hand crafting jewellery and following the wabi sabi philosophy.