Round Kundan Stud with Pearl Border

A pair of studs in gold-tone brass, set with cubic zirconia and coloured stones. Photographed in White.

What you are looking at

The matching earrings are small studs, which is unusual in a set of this kind — most bridal sets leave you with earrings you can wear once a year.

Metal and stones

Several stones are set polki-style, flat-topped and bedded in a rim of metal rather than gripped in claws. That is the older Indian way of setting a stone, and it gives a broad calm flash instead of a point of sparkle.

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.

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.

Colour options

2 colourways are stocked: White and Green. The photographs show one of them and the swatches on this page show the rest; the shade you choose is confirmed on your enquiry before anything is charged.

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.

Pull the hair off the face and let them show. With a heavy necklace as well this becomes a great deal of ornament — one or the other is usually enough.

What you are buying at this price is design rather than material, and that is a reasonable thing to buy. The shapes here come out of a jewellery tradition several centuries old, and they work at a tenth of the weight and a hundredth of the cost of the gold versions.

Care and storage

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.

Rather than an add-to-cart button you will find an enquiry button, and that is deliberate: these arrive in small quantities per colour, and we would rather confirm the shade is in hand than refund you later. All Keyura orders are prepaid. We do not offer cash on delivery.