Gold Tone Maang Tikka with Pearl Drop Pendant

A maang tikka in gold-tone brass, set with cubic zirconia, worn on the parting with the pendant falling at the hairline. The design is built around an open flower. Photographed in Red.

Design and detail

Flowers in Indian jewellery are rarely botanical. They are stylised into a repeating unit that can be scaled up or down to fill any space, which is why the same bloom turns up on a ring, on a necklace and on a temple door.

Small pearls finish the lower edge. Pearls do something no faceted stone can — they give back a soft, diffused light, which calms a design that would otherwise be all sparkle.

Materials

The clear stones are cubic zirconia, sold across India as American Diamond, or simply AD. Cubic zirconia is a laboratory-grown crystal of zirconium dioxide, and it is not an imitation in the way glass is: it is a genuinely hard, singly refractive crystal, cut on the same wheels as diamond. It disperses light into slightly more colour than a diamond does, which is why a good AD piece reads as bright rather than as dull paste.

Where the coloured stones sit in flat rims of metal rather than claws, the piece is borrowing from kundan work. In true kundan, pure gold foil is burnished cold around a stone until friction alone grips it; it is one of the few setting methods that needs neither heat nor solder. Costume jewellery copies the look in plated brass, and the broad flat rim is the tell.

Shades and stock

One colourway is stocked, in Red — the shade the design was drawn for and the one in the photographs.

Underneath the plating the piece is brass, finished with a premium gold polish. The weight in your hand is the brass; the colour is the polish.

A maang tikka hangs on the parting, with the hook pinned into the hair above the forehead. Set the chain so the pendant falls at the hairline rather than between the brows — too low reads as fancy dress, too high vanishes into the hair.

Costume jewellery earns its place by letting you wear a shape you would never commission in gold. Nothing here pretends to be precious; the pleasure is in the design, and the design is genuinely old.

Keeping it looking right

Plating is a surface, so it wears where it rubs. Perfume and sweat dull it fastest, so spray first and dress second, then wipe the piece with a soft dry cloth. A zip-lock pouch with the air squeezed out really is the best storage — it is what keeps oxygen off the metal.

This piece is listed for enquiry rather than instant checkout, because stock on the colour you want has to be confirmed before we take money for it. Use the enquiry button on this page and we will come back with availability, the final price and a delivery window. All Keyura orders are prepaid. We do not offer cash on delivery.