Why India Increasingly Supplies The World’s Gemstones

During Paris Fashion Week in March, the Geneva-based jeweller and watchmaker Chopard unveiled a suite of 15 emerald jewels, all which were cut from a single emerald rough — a colossal 6,225-carat rough emerald, which was mined in Zambia around a decade ago. Chopard chose to cut the stone not in Antwerp or Israel — long the dominant centres for gem cutting and polishing — but using a team of Indian craftsmen, brought in from Jaipur to its Geneva high jewellery atelier.

Chopard’s partnership with Indian cutters highlights the growing importance of the country’s gem-cutting expertise. India is now a powerhouse in diamond cutting: 90 percent of the world’s diamonds are manufactured in India today, with operations centred predominantly in Surat, in the western state of Gujarat, as well as Mumbai.

Many European jewellers, from the Place Vendôme houses to independent brands, increasingly source diamonds manufactured in India. The Parisian diamond jeweller Messika, for example, has sourced diamonds cut in India since the brand was founded 20 years ago.

“India has been a consistent and vital partner for us,” says Jean-Baptiste Sassine, Messika’s CEO.

Diamond dominance

While India’s diamond dominance today is linked to low-cost labour and efficiency, that is only part of the story. “The country historically is the most legitimate and respected player in the diamond industry,” Sassine said. “It is similar to Swiss watchmaking craftsmanship.”

The country’s diamond roots date back centuries. While there are no working mines today, India was home to the world-famous 16th-century Golconda mines, source of the renowned Hope Diamond and Koh-i-Noor, part of the British Crown Jewels. Meanwhile storied European houses have long been inspired by India’s jewellery tradition, most notably Cartier. During the 1920s and 1930s, the maison regularly travelled to India to source gemstones, ultimately inspiring its signature Tutti Frutti design of multi-coloured carved gemstones.

“There’s a big cultural link between Indian culture and jewellery that goes back centuries, even millennia,” explains Ravi Bhansali, managing director of Rosy Blue, a large diamond company based between Belgium and India with around 3,700 employees and over $1 billion in annual sales.

The company is vertically integrated, with operations ranging from cutting and polishing to global sales and distribution. A third-generation diamantaire, Bhansali explains that in the 20th century, Indian manufacturing emerged from the diamond hubs of Belgium and Israel, where large and significant stones were being cut and polished. As the trade grew, interest in dealing smaller stones declined, with Indian traders picking up the slack.

“Lower grade diamonds were either uninteresting or unaffordable for the Europeans to cut and polish in Europe,” says Bhansali. “So Indian traders used to come to Antwerp, buy that low grade, take them to India, chop them up into all kinds of smaller pieces and try to extract value out of them. … Even that type of rough [was] historically given funny names that sound crazy today — like ‘Indian rejection,’ ‘Indian low’ and ‘Indian light,’” explains Bhansali.

Eventually, Indian manufacturing developed its own expertise and know-how, as technological advancements levelled the playing field. Today the country manufactures some of the world’s most spectacular diamonds. (That includes many stones sourced from Russian diamond mines, prompting concerns in recent years that sanctioned stones risk trickling into Western markets via India. Suppliers say they’ve taken steps to segregate Russian diamonds in their processes).

Coloured stones

While the diamond trade has become more democratised by technology and state-of-the-art laser cutting machines, the market for coloured stones remains very different, not to mention a fraction of the size of the diamond trade. The market is also more disorganised and fragmented, says Bhansali. This is in part due to the vast geographic footprint of coloured stones — with rubies from Burma, tanzanite from Tanzania, emeralds from Colombia, for example. “It’s a completely different supply chain,” says Bhansali. “The players, the supply chains and countries involved are different.”

Cutting and polishing coloured roughs is also notably more rooted in hand craftsmanship and know-how than diamonds — which has helped put India increasingly in the spotlight, alongside other coloured stone hubs Thailand and Sri Lanka. India is one of the largest markets for buying rough coloured stones, like emeralds and rubies — and unlike diamonds, cutting these roughs doesn’t benefit from advanced scanning and cutting technology in the same way. In India, roughs are still largely examined by the naked eye by a master cutter, most of whom hail from generations of cutters, with apprentices starting as young as 15.

For Chopard’s aforementioned rough emerald, for example, craftsmen took weeks to examine the stone before beginning the cutting process, which took nearly a year in total. Ultimately yielding 850 carats of emeralds, these were set into five pairs of earrings, four necklaces, three rings, a bracelet and a high jewellery watch.

Named Insofu, which means elephant in the local Bemba language where the stone was mined, the name pays homage to its trunk-like shape and large size. The collection is being sold in partnership with the UK charity Elephant Family, with a portion of proceeds going to protect the Asian elephant.

Krishna Choudhary is a 10th-generation jeweller whose ancestors supplied royal gems to the country’s ruling maharajas in the 18th century. The founder of Santi Jewels, which is based in London and Jaipur, Choudhary prefers to work with coloured gemstone cutters in Jaipur for his designs, citing a larger market and diverse talent.

“Europe basically has just one person in Antwerp — or Paris or Amsterdam or Italy — who’s really specific,” he said. “But in Jaipur, it’s much easier to find people who are sitting and working on roughs, with far more knowledge.” Cutting an emerald for example, which is among the most fragile of precious stones, is a real art. The location of inclusions, for example, must be considered, and can jeopardise the stone’s brilliance. Meanwhile, the depth of colour can be ruinously compromised by an incision in the wrong place (colour saturation radiates from the centre of the stone) — all of which is crucially judged by the master cutter.

The hands-on, human touch of India’s gemstone cutting experts can be a boon to storytelling as well. The “Made in India” narrative is seen as adding romance and intrigue — and which resonates well with the art of jewellery craftsmanship.

In that regard, jewellery brands’ increased transparency about the role of Indian suppliers mirrors moves by brands like Dior and Dries van Noten, who have spotlighted the contributions of Indian embroiderers in recent years.

Chopard’s co-president and artistic director, Caroline Scheufele, recalls that when the Jaipur cutters arrived in Geneva, they insisted on sitting and working on the floor, just as they did at home, rather than at Chopard’s workbenches. They also faced a certain direction and only cut the stone at specific times. “Certain days a week and certain hours don’t work. It’s very spiritual,” says Scheufele. “This was also a discovery for everybody working at the Chopard ateliers — and they were curious to see what we are doing with the collection. It’s a nice memory for everybody.”