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A temple necklace is not cast in a mould. It is raised by hand out of sheet gold, hammered from behind, chased from the front, and passed through eight to fourteen pairs of specialist hands before it reaches a neck. Here is what happens at each bench — and how to recognise the difference when you hold the finished piece.
Quick Answer
Traditional South Indian temple jewellery is raised from sheet gold, not cast. The goldsmith rolls the alloy into a sheet, beds it on warm lac, and hammers the relief from the back — a repoussé process called nakshi — then refines the detail from the front by chasing. Stones are set in kundan, using strips of pure gold cold-welded around the stone without heat or solder. Pearls are knotted individually on silk.
This is why a hand-raised piece has depth, spring and a soft diffused light that a cast copy cannot reproduce. A cast piece has soft edges, uniform density and microscopic porosity. A raised piece is hollow — which is how a large temple necklace stays light enough to wear through a six-hour muhurat.
In the South Indian tradition of temple jewellery, the object is crafted by hand out of sheet gold rather than cast in a mould. The goldsmith heats the gold, rolls it into a sheet, beds it on warm lac, and forms the relief images of deities, mango and beaded motifs by hammering from the back. That repoussé process is called nakshi work, and it is refined from the front by chasing. Gemstones are then set in kundan style with gold foils rather than in prongs, and pearls are strung on knotted thread.
That sequence is the entire reason a temple piece carries a depth, a spring and a soft light that can never be reproduced in a cast one.
First Comes the Drawing
Not a single line is drawn without a purpose. The drawing is done in pencil on tracing paper, at actual size, and it settles three things at once: the language of the motifs, the repeats, and the silhouette in profile.
Motifs are not decoration. They are grammar. In South Indian design the vocabulary runs to Lakshmi and Gandaberunda figures, the mango or manga paisley for fertility and abundance, rudraksha beads for austerity, the peacock for courtship, the kasu coin for prosperity, and the lotus, which serves as the base for very nearly every pendant. Deccani and Nizami work adds a second layer on top of that — jaali grids, crescent and flower forms, and the bilateral symmetry inherited from Persianate design.
An experienced jeweller draws the motif for the wearer, not for the catalogue. A short-necked bride in a high-necked blouse gets a shallower choker with a less deep pendant, because otherwise the pendant fights the neckline. A wider collarbone gets a wider repeat, so the motif count reads evenly across the span. The sketch also fixes where the links fall, because a temple choker needs to flex in at least five places.
Teach-point
Count the motif repetitions on any temple choker. An odd number, centred, is the classical convention — it gives the eye a single focal point at the notch of the throat.
Alloying and Making the Sheet
Pure gold is far too soft to hold a hammered design, so it has to be alloyed — usually with copper and silver. The ratio is never accidental. Copper hardens the alloy and pushes it warm and slightly pink; silver softens it and pulls it pale and slightly green. A smith who wants to do high-quality nakshi needs an alloy that goes very soft when annealed and stretches without tearing.
From the ingot comes the sheet. On a traditional bench that means hammering on a steel stake; in a modern workshop it means a rolling mill. Either way, the skill that matters is annealing — reheating the metal to a dull red and letting it cool between passes. Working the metal changes its crystalline structure and hardens it, and a single piece of temple jewellery will be annealed something like twenty or thirty times over its making. Skip the annealing and the sheet splits at the deepest point of the relief, which is almost always the head of the divine figure, and always at the worst possible moment.
Sheet thickness — the gauge — is decided by what comes next. Too thick and the relief will not stand up cleanly. Too thin and the design dents the first time it meets a car door.
Nakshi, Repoussé and Chasing
This is the essence of temple jewellery. Everything else is preparation or finishing.
The metal is fixed to a lac bed — a pan or a slab of lakh, a shellac-based compound mixed with fine brick or clay powder and a few drops of oil. Heated with a flame it turns sticky and pliable; cooled, it sets hard. Lac is the ideal medium because it supports the metal everywhere while still yielding, which lets the hammer push a convex form rather than punch a hole through it.
The craftsman works with a hammer and a set of punches, each one ground by hand from a metal rod.
| Punch type | Function |
|---|---|
| Tracer / liner | Cuts the outline of the pattern into the surface |
| Doming / bossing | Pushes volume out from the reverse — the repoussé itself |
| Matting / texturing | Textures the ground so the relief reads more strongly against it |
| Planishing | Compresses and smooths a surface |
| Beading | Forms the domes that make the rows of gold beads along an edge |
The sequence at the bench
The outline is marked from the front. The sheet is lifted off the lac — warm the lac and it releases — then reversed, re-bedded, and the form pushed up from behind. Then reversed again and chased from the front for the fine detail: the eyelids, the folds of a sari on a goddess two centimetres tall, the vein of a mango leaf. Reverse, anneal, re-bed, repeat. Four or five rounds is normal for a complex central motif.
Why this beats casting
- Depth without dead weight. Because the motif is raised from sheet, it is hollow. That is how a large temple piece stays light enough to wear through a six-hour muhurat.
- A denser surface. Hammering compresses and work-hardens the metal, which takes a sharper finish than cast metal will.
- Undercut edges. Chasing turns the edge of the design under itself. A cast copy of the same motif will always have soft edges, uniform density and microscopic porosity.
Filigree and Granulation
If nakshi is built on sheet, filigree is built from wire — and wire is an art in itself.
Drawing the wire
A metal rod is pulled through a steel draw plate, a bar drilled with a row of ever-narrower holes. Each pull reduces the diameter while stretching the length. Every few draws the wire has to be annealed again before it will go further. To reach a really fine filigree wire, a goldsmith may pull it through forty different holes.
Filigree
The Deccani variation of filigree belongs to Karimnagar in Telangana, and is worked in silver wire. The smith bends the wire into scrolls with tweezers, packs them inside an outer framework, and solders the whole lattice at once using powdered solder and flux — judging the moment entirely by colour change and by timing the flash point of the solder.
Granulation
Older and harder still. Short lengths of wire are melted in a charcoal fire until surface tension pulls them into spheres, then sorted through sieves and attached to the surface by diffusion bonding: the granules are held with an organic adhesive containing copper salts, and the metal is heated until the copper-gold alloy at the contact point melts and fuses — but stopped before the granule itself reaches its own melting point. Overshoot by a moment and the granules are destroyed.
The patience economy: a single square inch of fine filigree takes a full day. This is the part of the craft the market most consistently under-prices, and it is why the skill is disappearing.
Polki, Kundan and Jadau, Properly Defined
These three terms get used interchangeably and they mean entirely different things.
Polki is a stone. Kundan is a setting technique. Jadau is the art of inlaying gems into gold using that technique.
What polki is
Polki is an uncut diamond, split or cut along the plane of the rough. It is polished to a degree but retains the outline of the rough, which is why no two polkis are alike — and why a polki necklace glows rather than sparkles. Light enters the large flat facet, reflects off the backing, and comes out diffused rather than flashed back as it would from a brilliant cut.
How a kundan setting is built
- The goldsmith makes a collet — a gold cup shaped to the outline of the stone.
- The space behind the stone is packed with lac, which supports the stone and carries the weight.
- A reflective foil is laid behind the stone, which lifts the brightness of a paler polki.
- Fine strips of extremely purified gold — the purified gold itself is what kundan means — are worked in between the stone and the collet wall and burnished down with a fine steel tool.
The trick is metallurgical. Pure gold is soft and clean enough to cold-weld: the strips fuse into a continuous edge under pressure at room temperature, with no solder and no heat. That matters enormously, because it allows stones to be set onto a piece whose reverse has already been enamelled in meenakari. Heat would destroy the enamel. Kundan setting needs none.
Kundan versus prong setting
In a prong or claw setting, a faceted stone is held by three to six claws gripping above the girdle, leaving the pavilion open for light to pass through. That setting exists to serve brilliance in a modern cut. A kundan setting does the opposite — it surrounds the whole stone in a smooth rim of gold, fully covered and closed at the back.
| Setting | Used for | Typical pieces |
|---|---|---|
| Kundan / jadau | Polki and other flat-cut or carved stones | Bridal chokers, rani haars, jhumkas, matha pattis, Hyderabadi Deccani jewellery |
| Prong, bezel, pavé | Faceted brilliant-cut diamonds | Modern rings, pendants, contemporary necklaces |
A great many Deccan bridal suites now deliberately carry both — jadau polki at the centre of gravity and brilliant cuts out at the extremities.
The Drill, the Knot and Guttapusalu
What Hyderabad is famous for is not mining pearls. Hyderabad does not mine pearls. It processes them better than any other city in the world. The karkhanas here have drilled, bleached, graded and strung pearls for decades, and that accumulated expertise is what gives Hyderabadi pearl jewellery its character.
Drilling
The unforgiving part. A pearl is nacre laid down in layer upon layer. If the drill veers off line, overheats, or leaves an off-centre exit point, the nacre flakes at the exit and the pearl is finished. Traditionally this was done with a bow drill and fine bits, working in from both ends to meet in the middle.
Sorting and matching
Pearls are sorted by size, shape, lustre, surface and — hardest of all — overtone, the faint pink, cream or silver cast sitting over the body colour. For a graduated strand, pearls must be sorted in steps of fractions of a millimetre until the whole string grades evenly.
Knotting
Pearls are strung on silk with a knot between each one, for two reasons. The knot stops the pearls abrading each other's drill holes as they slide. And if the string ever breaks, one pearl is lost instead of the whole necklace. At the clasp, a short coiled spiral of wire called French wire or gimp protects the silk where it passes through the clasp ring — the one genuinely weak point of any pearl necklace.
Guttapusalu
From the Telugu gutta (cluster) and pusalu (beads or pearls), guttapusalu is the South's great pearl-and-gold hybrid — a gold chain studded with rubies and emeralds, from which hang clusters of tiny pearls.
Technically, it is a weight-distribution problem. For the neckpiece not to hang sideways, every cluster must weigh the same. For the pearls not to tangle in movement, the clusters must be spaced correctly. And the gold chain has to be stiff enough to carry the load while staying flexible enough to travel with the collarbone.
Satlada and the Nizami Bench
The satlada — sat, seven; lada, strands — is the high point of the Deccan's courtly tradition: seven graduated strands of pearls, originally Basra, falling from the throat to the waist. It is the hardest stringing job in Indian jewellery.
What makes it hard
- Graduation. Each strand has to be graduated to an exact length so it nests cleanly inside the next. Misjudge the gap by a centimetre and the strands intersect, curl and rub.
- Volume matching. A satlada runs to several hundred pearls that must read as one set in colour, gloss and undertone across all seven rows — and pearls look different in combination than they do alone.
- Spacer design. Soldered side plates and end caps hold the strands at an exact distance. Those plates carry the full tensile load of the piece, and their soldering and hole alignment decide whether the necklace sits flat or rolls.
- Weight balance. Seven strands are a serious weight. If the centre of gravity sits too far forward, the piece lifts at the nape all day. Counterweight, clasp position and strand tension are all designed to prevent that.
How the Deccan layers
Level 1 — a close choker at the base of the neck, the foundation. Level 2 — a mid-length guttapusalu or short haar, the transition. Level 3 — a satlada or long haar, the anchor. Clasp positions are staggered so they do not stack at the nape.
What Hand-Finishing Actually Does
This is where the difference between an ordinary piece and an exceptional one emerges — and it is almost impossible to see in a photograph.
- Filing and emery removes every trace of solder and trues the edges. Every edge that meets the body is polished by hand, which is exactly why a well-made piece does not snag on a blouse.
- Antique finishing is controlled dulling of the surface. It roughens and darkens the metal so shadow stays in the low points and the high relief stands proud. It is not there to make something look old; it is there to deepen the design.
- Burnishing with an agate or steel burnisher compresses the surface rather than abrading it. Compressed metal is denser, more reflective and more durable than machine-buffed metal. Hand burnishing also lets the smith control the path of the tool — a polishing mop cannot, and will flatten the fine edge that took days to chase.
- Stringing, clasping and assembly happen last, after the fit has been checked on a neck mannequin.
How to tell
If you can see bright points on the high relief and dark hollows still sitting in the recesses, the piece was finished by hand. If the whole surface carries one even sheen and the edges look very slightly melted, it has been through a mop.
The Human Chain
A temple necklace passes through far more hands than most buyers imagine — typically eight to fourteen people. In the traditional workshop each role had its own name, because each was a specialism: the designer; the ghaaria, who enlarges and hollows the piece; the engraver; the meenakar, who paints the enamel; the jadiya, who sets the stones; the patua, who strings and threads; and the polisher. Nobody is excellent at all seven.
These traditions belong to the Vishwakarma (Vishwabrahmin) goldsmith communities, and the training is a gurukula one. A young man enters the master's workshop and spends his first years doing nothing but annealing, filing, blank cutting and punching. Only gradually does he earn the right to handle a client's precious metal. What he acquires cannot be got from any manual — reading the colour of heated metal, sensing whether the solder is about to flow, knowing how far a sheet will stretch under the hammer before it tears.
This is a living craft community, and a fragile one. The economics of handmade work run against cast work and machine chain. Every handmade piece bought keeps a bench open and an apprentice in training. That is the case for craft — and it is a far better case than nostalgia.
Reading Craftsmanship as a Buyer
Feel it. Don't just look at it. Six things to check with the piece in your hands:
-
Turn it over.
The back tells the real story. On a genuinely chased piece you will see the inverse of the front — recesses wherever the front is raised. Look for uniform wall thickness, neat solder joints and clean pierced backs. If there is meenakari, it should be as good as the front.
-
Look at the clasp.
A substantial piece needs a screw clasp or a hook with a safety catch, fixed to a reinforced plate rather than soldered onto thin metal. The clasp is where necklaces break.
-
Check the balance.
Hold the necklace at its centre and let it hang free. It should drop evenly and immediately. If one side hangs lower, or the piece rotates, the weight is uneven — and it will misbehave all evening.
-
Look for near-symmetry, not perfect symmetry.
Paired elements on handmade work should match closely but not identically. Those tiny variations are the signature of the hand. A piece where every single bead is flawlessly identical was almost certainly moulded from one master pattern.
-
Watch how it sits on the collarbone.
A choker should be curved to the shape of the throat and flexible enough to close any gap. A stiff choker that stands away from the neck at the ends has too few hinges.
-
Run a fingertip along every edge.
Proper finishing leaves nothing that can catch. If an edge snags on skin or fabric, it will snag on a blouse.
From Loom to Skin: Three Ways the Making Shapes the Styling
1. Match the fabric's density to the craft's density
A heavily zari-woven Kanjeevaram carries an intricacy of its own that cannot be shouted over. An antique-finish nakshi choker works against that silk, because relief and shadow read through a brocade. Fine filigree or polki placed against the same fabric disappears. On plain georgette, chiffon or organza the reverse is true — fine filigree, granulation and jadau need a quiet ground to be seen against.
2. Match the piece to the occasion
Hand-raised nakshi is hollow and therefore light, which makes it right for long ritual wear — a muhurat, a temple visit, a full day of ceremony. Jadau with kundan setting and lac backing does not tolerate moisture, scent, steam or impact, so it belongs to the evening and the reception rather than the haldi. Knotted pearls should be the last thing you put on and the first thing you take off, because silk absorbs perfume and hairspray and the strand ages prematurely if you don't.
3. Layer in the order the bench thinks in
Layer 1, base: start with a choker at the neck to set the finish theme for everything above it. Layer 2, transition: a mid-length piece or guttapusalu to bring movement — make sure its pearl strings fall below the choker's bottom edge rather than sitting on top of it. Layer 3, anchor: a satlada or long haar to build the vertical, ending at a deliberate point such as the waist or just under the bust, never accidentally at mid-torso.
Two rules hold across all three: the clasps at the nape must not overlap, and the metal finish must stay consistent from layer to layer.
See the difference in person
None of this reads in a photograph. Visit any of our seven Hyderabad showrooms and turn a piece over in your hands — or book a video call and we will walk you through the back of the work on camera.
Chat on WhatsApp Find a ShowroomFrequently Asked Questions
What is the process involved in making temple jewellery?
Temple jewellery is not cast; it is raised from sheet gold. The metal is heated and hammered into a sheet, bedded on a block of warm lac, and the deity and floral forms are hammered from the reverse as a relief — the repoussé stage. The design is then refined from the front by chasing, using fine steel punches. Stones and pearls are added afterwards, and the piece is hand-filed, burnished and assembled last.
What is nakshi work in jewellery?
Nakshi is the South Indian name for relief decoration raised by hand-hammering — the repoussé and chasing process in which motifs are pushed out of a flat sheet of metal using punches, a hammer and a lac bed. It is what gives temple jewellery its three-dimensional quality, its sharp edges and its beaded edging, and it cannot be reproduced precisely by casting, because casting softens every edge.
What is the difference between polki and kundan?
Polki is a stone; kundan is a technique. Polki is an uncut diamond, sliced with a flat back and left close to its natural shape. Kundan is the method of holding those polkis in place using strips of highly purified gold beaten very thin and burnished around the stone. The complete process of setting stones this way is called jadau.
Why do kundan settings use pure gold?
Because highly purified gold can be cold-welded — strips of it press together into an unbroken rim at room temperature, using neither heat nor solder. That is a necessity rather than a preference: it allows stones to be set after the piece has already been enamelled in meenakari on the reverse, which heat would destroy.
What is a satlada and why is it considered difficult to make?
A satlada is a seven-strand pearl necklace characteristic of the Deccan region and the Nizami period in Hyderabad, traditionally strung with Basra pearls. It is regarded as the hardest stringing job in Indian jewellery because several hundred pearls must be matched and graduated across all seven strands so the piece sits flat on the neck rather than rolling or riding up.
How can I tell a handmade piece from a cast one?
Turn it over. A hand-raised piece shows recesses on the back wherever the front is raised, with uniform wall thickness and clean solder joints. A cast piece has soft edges, a uniform density and a flat, even sheen. Handmade paired elements match closely but never identically — perfect symmetry in every bead usually means a single master mould. Hand finishing also leaves bright points on the high relief and shadow left sitting in the hollows.
What is Karimnagar filigree?
Karimnagar in Telangana is the home of the Deccani filigree tradition, worked in fine silver wire. The wire is drawn down through successively narrower holes in a steel draw plate, bent into scrolls with tweezers, packed inside an outer frame and soldered as a complete lattice — the smith judging the moment purely by colour change and the flash point of the solder. A single square inch takes about a day.
Why is handmade jewellery more expensive than cast jewellery?
Because the cost is labour, not material. A complex central motif goes through four or five rounds of reversing, annealing and re-bedding; a piece is annealed twenty or thirty times over its making; a square inch of fine filigree takes a day; and eight to fourteen specialists contribute to a single necklace. Cast work replaces all of that with one mould used repeatedly.
