Jaipur: "City of Colored Gems"
Jaipur is India’s second
important gems and jewellery exporting centre and the first for sales
to foreign tourists. With a history dating back to more than two and a
half centuries, the famed Indian Gems City of Jaipur is still a
hotspot in Gems 'n' Jewellery.
 From
tradition-bound manual processing of colored gems and the manufacture
of specialised jewellery like Minakari, the long passage to a modern
gems and jewellery sector has been a difficult and rather slow
transition, but Jaipur has endeavoured to keep pace with changing
times. It has been a double challenge - living up to past glory, while
moving ahead in modern times to meet growing global competition. So
what Jaipur offers now is actually a glorious synthesis of the ancient
and the contemporary.
Jaipur had not only been the main colored gems processing centre of
India, but also a global centre because most of the world supply of
cut and polished emerald flowed out from this gems city. Besides
emeralds, Jaipur has been processing the whole rainbow of colored
gems, as well as pearls. The traditional processing work undertaken
here with outstanding skill includes cutting and polishing of over a
hundred species of colored gemstones, both natural and synthetic,
carving, bead-making, stringing, manufacture of objets d’art and fine
jewellery. A local Ustad (master cutter) has performed the rare feast
of cutting 1400 tiniest emeralds, totally weighing a single carat ! A
world record indeed.
Dynamic Generation:
The younger generation has brought dynamic Transformation and
internationalism to this sector. Younger gemsmen have taken keen
interest in not only modernising manufacturing, but are also
concentrating on marketing which has become vitally important in
modern business. The traditional jewellers did business at their 'gaddis'
with mostly their the globe by personal visits, displaying choice
goods at international expos and developing new contacts, but have
also established branch offices overseas, thereby broadening the
horizons of this business. They are actually ambassadors of this
beautiful world of gems and jewellery who have crossed the seven seas
to spread the message of global cooperation in this fraternity.
Jaipur,
which has diversified into modern automatic jewellery making, now has
a Jewellery Product Development Centre too which has commenced
training jewellery designers. The aim of the GJEPC in founding this
much needed facility is to provide trained designers for the city’s
developing jewellery industry.
Jaipur
already has a Gem Testing Laboratory, which conducts training too, and
a regional office of India’s apex body Gem and Jewellery Export
Promotion Council. A gem Industrial Park was also started. The
Industrial Development Corporation of Rajasthan has taken it over and
proposes to resurrect it.
Modernization:
Lately the most important step Jaipur has taken forward, is
modernization of both the gems and jewellery industries. It started
manufacturing colored gems in calibrated sizes to meet overseas
demand. Ultrasonic machines were inducted into the bead making
industry. Semi-automatic production in other sections of the gems
sector followed. A very important development in this respect is that
today Jaipur is not only using modern machines but is also
manufacturing some of them. Page-
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