City of Colored Gemstones and Jewellery

Jaipur is India’s second important gems and jewellery exporting centre and the first for sales to foreign tourists. With a history dating back to more than two and a half centuries, the famed Indian Gems City of Jaipur is still a hotspot in Gems 'n' Jewellery.

From tradition-bound manual processing of colored gems and the manufacture of specialised jewellery like Minakari, the long passage to a modern gems and jewellery sector has been a difficult and rather slow transition, but Jaipur has endeavoured to keep pace with changing times. It has been a double challenge - living up to past glory, while moving ahead in modern times to meet growing global competition. So what Jaipur offers now is actually a glorious synthesis of the ancient and the contemporary.

Jaipur had not only been the main colored gems processing centre of India, but also a global centre because most of the world supply of cut and polished emerald flowed out from this gems city. Besides emeralds, Jaipur has been processing the whole rainbow of colored gems, as well as pearls. The traditional processing work undertaken here with outstanding skill includes cutting and polishing of over a hundred species of colored gemstones, both natural and synthetic, carving, bead-making, stringing, manufacture of objets d’art and fine jewellery. A local Ustad (master cutter) has performed the rare feast of cutting 1400 tiniest emeralds, totally weighing a single carat ! A world record indeed.