The workshop
Third floor, Kanchwala Building. Since 1994.
A room in Zaveri Bazar with the plating bench along one wall, trays on every shelf, and two dozen people who between them can take a piece from a master model to a finished, plated, polished object without it leaving the building.
The team, in the workshop
Photographed where the work happens rather than against a backdrop — the trays behind them are jobs in progress, labelled and shelved by the karigar they belong to.
Everything under one roof
Which matters more than it sounds: each of the three processes decides how well the next one goes.
Casting
A master becomes a mould, and the mould becomes the run. Cut and filed ready for what comes next.
Read more →STEP 2Polishing
Magnetic and dhaga, taking the surface to where it needs to be before anything is plated.
Read more →STEP 3Plating
Cleaned, barrier-coated where needed, and laid at a stated thickness.
Read more →When these three sit in three different workshops, nobody owns the result. The polisher does not know what the plater needs; the plater cannot tell what the polisher left behind. Here the same people carry the piece the whole way, which is why a fault gets found at the bench rather than at your counter.
The film
Making of Jewellery
Seven minutes on the floor: melting, the assembling of flowers, balls, leaves and wire into a piece, and the polishing that ends it.
“Jewellery making is hundred percent a human process.”
What comes off this bench
The full list, in the workshop's own words.
Rhodium
White rhodium plating
Rhodium
Ganga-Jamuna two-tone
Rhodium
Pink / rose rhodium
Rhodium
Black rhodium
Rhodium
Antique rhodium
Casting
Jewellery rubber casting
Polishing
Magnetic polish
Polishing
Dhaga polish
32 years in one bazar
Zaveri Bazar is not a location, it is a network — masters, casters, setters, polishers and platers within a few minutes of each other, most of whom have known each other for decades. A workshop lasts here on repeat trade from people who can walk to a competitor in four minutes, which is a harder audience than any advertisement ever has to face.
Rated 4.1 across 89 reviews on the Jewelxy trade directory.
Bring the work to the bench
The workshop is in Zaveri Bazar and has been since 1994. Tell us the metal, the finish and the quantity, and we will tell you what the job takes.
Kanchwala Building, 3rd Floor, Room No. 28, 63 Dhanji Street, Zaveri Bazar, Mumbai 400003