Our Process

Making Clay jewelry is a long yet most rewarding exercise. We use cleaned riverbed clay to make our jewelry pieces.

The moist pliable clay is first wedged or kneaded . A process which can take upto 20 minutes depending on the amount of clay (and how tired we are at that moment). The clay is then given the desires shape as per the design. This may take multiple iterations depending on the design. Sometimes the design doesn’t work out altogether too! So we go back to the designing board to make it work. A prework is necessary before clay is tackled as per the the main design .Prework includes cutting heat resistant wires in desired shapes of straight or U-pins (this is how we get calluses on our hands ). Certain smaller beads such as spherical lollipop beads and spherical beads with single or double U-pins ( also known as loop beads) or beads in different shapes are made and dried well in advance. Once the
the shape has been cut, the dimensions are measured and remeasured and measured again (didn’t we say we make premium jewelry and attention to detail is our middle name!).The texture or design comes next. This is the trick part because it impacts the shape of the design—sometimes the clay goes back to kneading/wedging process again and we start from the scratch (typically a small ball of wedged clay). Once the design and texture is in place , we go back to previous step—measure the size and reshape/resize as required. The embellishments are added next (mostly lollipop or loop beads). Then comes are favourite part—-refining the entire piece to remove spurious clay and smoothening out the clay where needed—its
tricky as slightest unwarranted pressure can bring the piece back to square one (or the ball of clay). Finally its ready to dry. Drying process also reveals faults in the design—beads not spaced properly, a clay mixture which has uneven moisture gets uneven design, a pin not inserted properly can scrape skin—-all of these fails get tossed into clay for reuse but teach us immensely on what to do better next time. Some designs go back to drawing board for want of better technique.

Once the piece is bone dry –takes 2-3 days depending on local weather, its set aside with pieces which are to be fired.

The cute small gas kiln we use can fire 10-15 pieces in one firing. This
kiln takes upto 4 hours to convert our riverbed clay into firm ceramic
pieces. It reaches a temperature of ~800Celius which is why earthernware is what we use (anything else is not supported by our kiln). Then comes the cooling—the kiln is naturally cooled. Takes upto 24 hours—we’ve not ventured into opening the kiln earlier due to safety reasons. The kiln gives us beautiful black pieces (also an indication that firing was successful).

Technically the dried clay is fired through reduction process in our kiln
which gives the pieces their velvety black colour. A bit of brushing and
blowing helps removes ash and other residue from the pieces and off these go to be painted. Any design flaw or irregularity in design gets heightened by imparting colour. Here also we discard pieces that do not match our quality standards. However these discards cannot be reused as the clay has now changed its form into ceramic.

Each terracotta piece is given two coats of paint (except for black which is mostly left as it is). The finishing coat of color brings out the intricacies in the design. This only holds good if the first coat of colour is uniform and done well; which happens only if there was great attention to detail and neatness while shaping and designing wet clay.

Finally its time for findings to bring together these pieces into fine
premium natural jewelry.

And then there it is ready to be adorned and admired-Naturally Elegant!!