Kundan: a history from Jaipur to Hyderabad

Kundan is technically a setting, not a stone. The word refers to the highest grade of refined gold — 24-karat, hammered into thin foils to hold stones in place without prongs.

The technique traces to Mughal courts of the sixteenth century. The setting allowed lapidaries to use uncut, irregular stones (polki) by molding gold foil around them. In Jaipur, kundan grew into the dominant idiom of court jewellery; in Hyderabad, it evolved alongside the Nizami treasury into something denser, more architectural.

Today, a kundan piece is typically built up over weeks: a copper or silver lac-filled base is formed, stones are set with gold foil one by one, enamel meenakari is added to the reverse, and the whole is polished to a mirror finish.

Modern designers complicate kundan in three ways: by using lab-grown stones instead of mined uncut diamonds, by replacing copper bases with platinum, and by stripping the meenakari off the reverse to leave the structure visible. Each move is contested within the craft community — purists argue kundan's beauty is precisely in its excess.