The first thing you notice about Bharathi Raviprakash’s designer jewellery collections is the stones. Mention that to the designer and pat comes the answer, “The stones call to me. My design process is impulsive but stone-driven.”
A chat with Bharathi, the woman behind the Chennai-based bespoke designer jewellery store Studio Tara, is punctuated with giggles and admonitions of ‘you can’t publish that’ when she says something she thinks is indiscreet.
When I meet her on the eve of her show in Coimbatore, she is busy taking photos of the flower arrangements that will be the counterfoil to her jewellery. “Isn’t this beautiful?” she enthuses. Bouncing from idea to idea, her answers come in a breathless rush of information, as I struggle to keep pace.
It’s rather disconcerting when she collapses into laughter at the very first question — how did she get into jewellery designing? “I love jewellery and I buy a lot. My dad and husband were paying for all my buys. Finally they got fed up and suggested I learn how to do it properly and make my own stuff.”
So off she went to London to study jewellery design. “I had to sell some artworks to fund my course.” Casually she drops names like Souza and Raza and then rather aggrievedly states, “Within a month of my selling them, the prices went through the roof.” A shrug and we’re back at good-natured banter. After her two-year course, she opened Studio Tara in 2002. “That was 4,600 pieces ago,” she says, in wonder.
She’s a clingy designer, she says, meaning that she doesn’t quite like to part with her work. She tells an amusing story of how she bought back a pair of earrings by paying more than she had sold it for. Her mother, who was with her, listens in horrified fascination.
Her work is split into two: orders and her collections. For orders, she works with her clients. “I spend a lot of time with them,” she says. “I need to understand their sense of style and what works for their personality.”
Her designs traverse quite a range — from rock chic and funky to traditional — and include stuff that can be worn for a party, a boardroom meeting or a wedding. So choosing stuff must be quite tough.
She muses and then says, “I ask the client to give me all their wants; I’ll take all that in and then give them my take on their wants.” Just listening to the various stages of trial before the final piece is approved is exhausting. She laughs, “For Indians, jewellery is like going to a restaurant, a mood uplifter. So they don’t mind.”
Her job doesn’t end once she sells her designs. “I ask for feedback: where they wore it, what they wore it with… sometimes I end up working on styling as well. I ask for photos too.”
That’s as far as orders go. Her collections are mood specific and influenced by her travels. So Ooty was the inspiration for her Tree of Life collection (which is not part of this show). Then there were the Evil Eye and Chilli collections, which were the result of her travels in Turkey. “Both countries have this concept of using chillies to ward off the evil eye, drishti ,” she says. “The idea is quite traditional but there is nothing traditional about the collection.”
What about her work with traditional goldsmiths? “It’s difficult to work with a designer like me,” she says candidly. “I work with one young man now; his grandfather made one of my first collections. So, in a sense, I’ve seen him grow from being an apprentice to a master. But traditional artisans need to be open to new ideas and designs. If they’ve got an open mind, it’s easy to work with them.”
She doesn’t have a favourite piece of jewellery, she says, so I ask about her favourite design moments. “All of them,” she says, looking as if the question was incomprehensible. There must have been favourite moment, I persist. She thinks a little and then says, “When someone outside wears my jewellery especially when I least expect it. Sometimes, on a flight or at a shop, someone stops me and compliments me on a piece I’m wearing.”
Most of her stuff is for women, so what about men? “Only for those I’m very comfortable with. Men make up their minds a lot easier. For them, colour and design simplicity is paramount,” she says. “Generally speaking, geometry is essential for men. Women tend to go in for a lot of drama.”
I bring up something else that intrigued me. Her website features some stunning photographs of old gnarled hands wearing a bracelet or ring. “All ads show these gorgeous 20-year-olds. How many of us look like that?” she asks. “And just because one gets old, it doesn’t mean that you lose interest in how you look or what you wear. I wanted to show that.”
Finally we come to the reason for this meeting: her show at Coimbatore. “Coimbatore is the biggest market after Chennai. It has a very discerning population. Earlier, they would just pick stuff up on their travels. But the younger lot wants it here.” ShriVyshnavi Annush, whose Pookari portal is hosting the show, adds, “This way people get to interact with the designer and get inputs about what works for their body or skin type. It makes a difference to the experience of buying.”
Her show here features a medley of designs. “It was a conscious choice. I did not want the audience to get preset notions. There’s no traditional stuff here. It’s more contemporary and funky.”
