Multi Stone Necklace Set in Gold Tone

A necklace set in gold-tone brass, set with cubic zirconia and coloured glass stones. It sits just below the collarbone, which is the easiest necklace length to wear. The design is built around a cluster of stones. Photographed in Multi Color.

A closer look

Massing small stones into a cluster is the cheapest way to get the light of one large stone, and it is how Indian jewellery has always answered that problem — the cluster has a far longer history here than the solitaire.

Materials

American Diamond is the Indian trade name for cubic zirconia, a crystal grown in a furnace rather than dug out of the ground. It takes a proper facet, holds a polish, and throws a little more coloured fire than diamond because it bends light harder. At this price it is the only stone that will give a design real light.

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.

Colours and availability

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

The base is brass under a premium gold polish. Brass is the right base for costume jewellery — heavy enough to feel like something, soft enough to be worked, and it does not go brittle with age.

Wearing it

Wear it with the neckline bare — a boat neck, a deep round neck, or a blouse cut away at the throat. A necklace at this weight competes with a dupatta pulled across the chest, so pin the dupatta back off the shoulder.

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.

Looking after it

Treat the plating as the wearing part. Keep it away from water, perfume and hair spray, put it on after you have finished dressing, and wipe it with a dry cotton cloth before it goes away. Stored dry in a zip pouch with the air pressed out, the finish lasts for years; left in a humid bathroom it will not last a season.

The photographs on this page are of the piece itself, shot under ordinary light rather than in a studio, so what you see is close to what arrives. Screens do shift colour, though, and a deep red can read as maroon on one phone and as crimson on another — if the exact shade matters to you, ask on the enquiry and we will describe it against something familiar.

Checkout on this piece runs through an enquiry rather than a cart. Colour stock moves quickly at this price, so we confirm the exact shade, the price and the delivery estimate with you first. Payment is prepaid in every case; cash on delivery is not available.