Fine Kite Stone Payal with Pearl Drops

Payal is simply the Hindi word for an anklet, and in most of India it is still the first piece of jewellery a girl is given and the last an older woman takes off. It is worn as a pair, one on each ankle, and traditionally it was meant to be heard as much as seen — the sound announced that someone was coming, which in a joint household was a courtesy rather than a performance.

Metal and stones

This is the delicate version of the square-stone anklet. Each stone is small — four or five millimetres across — cut flat and square and set on its point in a thin milled bezel, and the stones are spaced along a fine chain rather than linked edge to edge. Below each one hangs a cluster of three or four tiny pearl-white beads.

What you are looking at

The spacing is what makes it work. By leaving chain visible between the settings, the design gives each stone room to be read as an individual point of colour rather than as part of a continuous band. The result is an anklet that looks considered rather than heavy, and one that sits comfortably under a trouser hem or inside a shoe.

The pearl drops add the one thing a flat anklet otherwise lacks, which is depth. They hang below the line of the chain, so from the side you see two layers — the bright stones on the chain and the soft matt beads beneath them — and they swing very slightly as you walk. They are quiet; they tap rather than ring.

A word on the stones, because it matters when you are choosing a colour. These are glass and cubic zirconia, not gemstones, cut and polished and set by hand into closed metal bezels. That is the traditional setting for Indian costume jewellery and it does two useful things: the closed back holds the stone securely against the knocks an anklet takes, and it puts a dark oxidised rim around every stone so the colour reads clearly instead of washing out against the metal.

Shades and stock

It also means the colours are saturated rather than subtle. A sea green here is a true green-blue, a ruby is a deep pink-red, and the baby pink is pale and milky rather than bright. The photographs on each swatch are of that exact colourway, so trust them over the colour name.

Three colourways are stocked. Sea Green is shown in the main photograph and is the best-stocked. Ruby gives the most contrast against the pale pearls. Green is the deepest of the three. A baby pink version of this design exists but the supplier has no usable photograph of it, so it is not listed here rather than shown with the wrong picture.

Please note that the supplier's catalogue shot of this design shows a mixed-colour sample that is not one of the stocked options. Each colourway sold here runs a single stone colour the whole way along, and the photograph on each swatch shows that colour as it ships.

German silver is the trade name for a bright white alloy of copper, nickel and zinc. It contains no silver at all. What it does have is a hard, cool-toned surface that takes an oxidised finish well and resists scratching better than plated brass, which is why almost every everyday Indian anklet is made to look like it.

How to wear it

Of the stone-set anklets here this is the one best suited to ordinary days. It is light, it is quiet, nothing on it projects far enough to catch, and it is small enough to wear alongside a watch or a bracelet without the two competing.

A note on wearing a pair rather than one. Single anklets have become common and there is nothing wrong with wearing one, but a pair sits differently: the two sounds fall slightly out of step as you walk, which is what produces the soft irregular jingle people associate with payal rather than a single repeating note.

How to care for it

An anklet lives a harder life than any other piece of jewellery. It meets shoes, floors, door frames and bedsheets, and it is the piece most likely to be worn into the shower because taking it off is a nuisance. Water is what dulls an oxidised finish fastest and it is also what loosens a bezel-set stone over time, so slip it off before bathing. A dry soft cloth is the whole cleaning routine — never a silver polish or a dip, which strip the blackening the design depends on and can fog the stones.