An Exploration of Jewelry Making in India
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Published on: January 27, 2025

This past May, I traveled to India with the jeweler Ben Bridge, to visit three of the factories they work with here: Shah Luxury in Mumbai, where the Bella Ponte bridal collection is made; Ankit Gems in Surat, which cuts exquisite large diamonds; and Tresor, an 18th-generation family-owned factory in Jaipur, which specializes in colored gemstones and manufactures pieces for the Lisa Bridge collection. India has a long, rich history of jewelry making, and the trip offered a lens into both heritage and cutting-edge techniques and craftsmanship.
Custom Design at Shah Luxury
The first factory we visited was Shah Luxury, run by brothers Salil and Neil Shah. The beauty of the Bella Ponte collection is that it allows Ben Bridge’s customers to customize their wedding and engagement rings. As Ben Bridge CEO Lisa Bridge explained, the goal was to do something beyond just allowing a choice of metals, or stone sizes, or other simple modifications. She wanted to offer true customization, and at scale. The Shahs’ technology is an essential piece of this process. At their factory, each ring is created to the exact specifications of the customer’s design in a process that combines modern technology (CAD, 3D printing, and more) and human skill (to polish the metal and set the stones).
What’s impressive is not just the scale at which Ben Bridge and Shah are able to produce one-of-a-kind pieces but the way they are able to personalize the process: Whether you are designing a ring from scratch or taking inspiration from existing designs in the collection, you work closely with Ben Bridge to ensure that the piece is exactly what you want, and you receive detailed mockups and plans of it along the way. You also get to see a 3D rendering of the ring, thanks to an innovative hologram viewer that pairs with a mobile phone. Then during manufacturing, your piece is photographed as it moves through the process, and when it is delivered, you receive a QR code that shows you the steps that have gone into creating it—the story of your ring.

Diamond-Cutting in Surat
Next we traveled north, to Surat, a city of 4.5 million that is the diamond-cutting capital of the world: more than 90 percent of the world’s diamonds are cut and polished here. Ankit Gems, the cutting factory that Ben Bridge works with, specializes in large stones and fancy shapes—pear, emerald, marquise, oval, and the like. Ankit Shah, the company’s director, walked us through the cutting process from the rough packet to the ready-for-sale stone.
The stones arrive at Ankit in large parcels—though of course, “large” is a relative term. They are large in the sense that each parcel contains many uncut stones and could be valued at $1.3 or $1.4 million. But each parcel would fit in a pocket; you could hold all the stones in a parcel in your cupped hands.
It is difficult to wrap your mind around just how many stones are moving through Ankit at any given point, and with such a level of scrutiny and precision that you could find any stone at any time and see exactly where in the process it is. The key to this: Each stone is placed in a packet when it is removed from the parcel; this accompanies it throughout the production process and documents both its attributes and its evolution. The stones are first weighed and scanned by a series of machines to map their internal structure and inclusions and assess their color, clarity, potential cuts, and more. The goal is to choose the best cut for each stone—one that preserves weight and maximizes clarity.

Colored Gemstones in Jaipur
The final facility we visited was in Jaipur, which is known for its colored stone industry. (It is also known as the Pink City, but this is unrelated to the colored stone industry—it is due to the color of the buildings in the old quarter, a beautiful dusky pink.) At the factory, Trésor, we saw tubs filled with aquamarine, citrine, malachite, and more—huge chunks of stone that would be cut down and polished into delicate bracelets, necklaces, rings, and more. Trésor manufactures the Lisa Bridge Collection, an accessibly priced line designed by Ben Bridge president and CEO Lisa Bridge. The pieces—think rose quartz, moonstone, amethyst, and tourmaline cabochons set in delicate 14-karat gold or silver—are beautiful: delicate and distinctive and eminently gift-worthy.

The three facilities we saw in India were vastly different in many ways, of course. But there was a constant: the dedication to doing the best work possible, in the best way possible. “There’s a lot of people out there you could work with,” Lisa Bridge told me. “But we just don’t have any interest in working with people who don’t share our same values.”