There was a time when a person’s worth in this country was measured in silver. A shagun envelope wasn’t complete without a silver coin pressed into it; the epitome of wedding gifts was in silver bowls and coins passed between the happy couple; and if you were fortunate, the adage ‘born with a silver spoon’ was true to its words. The metal has earned that trust the hard way. Silver ornaments have been dated to the Indus Valley Civilisation, circa 3300 BCE, and by the Mughal era it had moved to court—thalis and goblets engraved for banquets under Akbar and Jahangir. This year it built a case beyond sentiment too: prices touched an all-time high of $121.64 an ounce in January, capping a 147 per cent rally through 2025, silver’s best run since 1979.
Anita Dongre’s design language has spent three decades positioning handmade right, and her silver line makes the same case through one recurring image: the elephant. The Haathi Icon collection, worked in 92.5 sterling silver by artisans in Rajasthan and hand-set with crystals, semi-precious stones and freshwater pearls, takes this motif as an ode to tradition. The range runs wide: Haathi Studs at Rs 15,000 sit at one end, a pearl-set Haathi Choker at Rs 1,00,000 at the other, with a Harmony Ring, a Drop Necklace and a Charm Necklace filling the middle. The brand’s own line is that a piece isn’t bought so much as inherited into—a fairly precise description, for a house built on slowness, of what it’s actually selling.
Rasa Silver Stories is making a blunter argument: gold is not the only metal counted in for fine jewellery, silver can swoop right in. The label reimagines Temple, polki, kundan and jadau craftsmanship, all of which are techniques used for gold jewellery—in 925 sterling silver finished with a 24kt gold polish. The Luxorian Victorian Necklace Set, its moissanite cascade framing an emerald-green centre stone, runs to Rs 1,35,450; the Gajessa Pallais Necklace Set, its own elephant motif rendered in polki, to Rs 1,11,000; a pair of Mayuraflora polki danglers comes in at Rs 31,000.
Silver is here to be a part of you, and all you have to do is embrace it, just as your grandparents and their heirlooms did
Tribe Amrapali, the younger, more experimental arm of Amrapali since 2013, works the same metal differently—through repoussé, hand-hammered from the reverse into relief, and meenakari enamel fused onto the surface in colour. Its Ghungroo Collection highlights folk jewellery: an oxidised silver bangle strung with individually enamelled charms and actual ghungroos, at Rs 68,495, and a bib necklace with a similar technique at Rs 1,56,663, made to order over four to six weeks. This is almost reaching for the sound and colour of a village fair, with the same hand-set precision.
Swadesh works on a different register again, when you walk into the store—it resembles a quintessential upscale family almirah, except everything here is new. A cloisonné-enamelled flask, its scene of a courting couple under a Persian-style tree, sits at roughly Rs 9.4 lakh; a diamond-and-emerald kamarbandh, worn low over a sari, at close to Rs 2.75 lakh; and a large-format silver murti of Srinathji in dense repoussé, lotus and peacock detailing at its base, priced near Rs 4.9 lakh. The range extends to a fluted, mother-of-pearl look-handled tea set (Rs 6 lakh), a hand-chased mythological pen (Rs 86,000) and a repoussé photo frame cut into a Rajput mihrab arch (Rs 8.4 lakh)—the message throughout is inevitably that silver is here to stay and be a part of you, and all you have to do is embrace it, just as your grandparents and their heirlooms did.