Hanut Singh – Romancing The Stones

Some forms of greatness whisper rather than shout and are all the better for it. Some creatives are the secret to a discerning coterie of people who jealously guard their sources. To hear of them and know of their work is like a secret password, a secret handshake into their rarefied world.

Hanut Singh is one such being

His jewelled creations dust the shoulders and grace the necks and fingers, not only of the wildly famous like Oprah Winfrey, Beyoncé Knowles, Madonna, Cher, wellness guiding light Donna D’Cruz, Nicole Kidman, Diane Von Furstenberg, Mary Kate Olsen, Penelope Cruz, Bollywood royalty, Shwetha Bachan Nanda and many Indian screen stars including Kareena Kapoor Khan, in addition to jewellery cognoscenti around the world who buy his coveted pieces in highly anticipated private showings and trunk shows. Once you wear one of Singh’s singular pieces, you’re constantly surprised by how many people recognize his distinctive style, a style that manages to mix ethereal delicacy with the structured elegance and arresting look of Art Deco. Interestingly enough, a Hanut Singh design manages to be effortlessly gender-neutral in the most unstudied way. Great jewellery has a way of eschewing fusty notions of gender.

Not formally trained in jewellery design, Hanut has something more valuable and useful than mere G.I.A. certification, excellent as that may be. He possesses an obsession for and deep, abiding passion, innate knowledge and understanding of jewels than runs through his blood and DNA. Growing up in an environment called the Paris of the Punjab, having a beauteous grandmother known as the Pearl of India and a family for whom the best of opulent jewels were a mere matter of course may just mean you have a provenance and history which needs very little else in the way of formal tutelage.

Scion of the distinguished and renowned Karputhala royal family, Singh is the great grandson of Maharajah Jagajit Singh and the grandson of Maharajah Karamjit Singh and Maharani Sita Devi. Throw in amongst others, a recipient of the Kaisar-i-Hind Medal for distinguished public service and you’ve got a family with undeniable stature and cachet.

When the transcendent beauty Princess Sita Devi was your beloved grandmother, and a woman feted by the great and the good, lauded for her inimitable style and luminous beauty and for her astonishing collection of jewels, it’s safe to say that an innate understanding of gems and jewellery is in your bones and marrow. Princess Sita Devi needed no occidental imprimatur to give her radiant loveliness its due – the famous and infamous of her time paid homage to her grace and incandescent, aerial sublimity. Cecil Beaton, Man Ray, Oliver Messell and others attempted to do justice to that ethereal face; famous couturiers including Schiaparelli, Mainbocher, Callot Soeurs, Madeleine Vionnet, Jeanne Paquin, Jean Patou who, together with the milliner Reboux were inspired to create superb ensembles and creations to set off her relentless beauty, inimitable style and mind-boggling Indian gems.

Like other noble families of their ilk, these families travelled with Vuitton trunks laden with quantities of their own superb jewels, the likes of which astounded the famed jewellery houses of Boucheron, Chaumet and Cartier, used as they were to see wonderful and resplendent gemstones. Their grand, multi-coloured “pierres de colours” became known only in later decades as the famous Tutti Frutti concoctions.

This is a family who can claim the legendary Martand “Mapu” Singh as one of their own, a personage of immense culture, kindness, and refinement, ‘a gentleman and a scholar’ to quote Nancy Mitford, whose understanding and profound knowledge of the breadth and depth of India’s textile glories was so meticulously curated and ungrudgingly shared with the world beyond India.

To wear a Hanut Singh piece is to be noticed

By those in the know. Usually, other gem-obsessed people will notice the unexpected juxtapositions of seemingly random stones that mark both wearer and creator as originals who march to their own drummer, set their own course, and refuse to be dictated to about the latest jewel du jour or passing decorative fad.

Earrings of an audacious and surprising mix of stones seduce the eye. The famous scabbard and sword motif pendants combine a soupçon of danger with dazzle: As in all beautifully made jewellery, the back and undercarriage feel as satin smooth as the front. Singh sources his stones himself and oversees every aspect of his boutique operation to ensure that no detail, however small, is overlooked.

For all the accolades he garners, Hanut Singh talks of his creations with humility and candour, with a throwaway insouciance refreshing in the rarefied and precious world of high-end jewellers. Not content to rest on his illustrious laurels, he speaks instead of being the vessel that creates whatever visions he’s inspired by. Much of his work, although not all of it, is a full-throated paean to the glories of the Art Deco movement began in 1925 at the Paris Exposition (although it wasn’t referred to as Art Deco until British art historian Bevis Hillier titled it so in the Sixties).

 Singh’s pieces reflect that singular notion of the fusion aesthetics of Art Deco with the sinuous angularity and geometric, repeating grace that is the hallmark of this style.

The man himself is the embodiment of all he holds dear. Possessing a dulcet, Cognac-and-Cigars voice, Singh is endlessly articulate when it comes to talking about his self-confessed obsession with gorgeous gemstones and believe me, his technical knowledge is both vast and esoteric. Amongst those whom he admires is the inimitable Ambani Shinde, a very under-the- radar designer for Harry Winston whom the preeminent jeweller himself called ‘the jewel behind the jewel’, the treasures that are the fabulous objects of J.A.R. and Michelle Ong of Carnet Jewellery. It’s practically a Master Class in jewellery history and lore. As he talks, it’s impossible to miss the limpid Golconda diamond on his finger, one of the great inherited treasures of his family.

My first Hanut Singh piece was a gift from two of the small cadre of people whom I dearly love – and who love me. Recognizing the verdant velvet box with that unmistakably upright ‘Hanut Singh’ signature, I knew that something wonderful was within. Normally a reticent person not given to public displays of emotion, I recall gasping in delight when I saw the swirling disc of gleaming square-cut rubies and diamonds that was the Crescent Moon. It’s become a talisman of sorts, reminding me constantly of unswerving affection and pure friendship. The necklace sits beautifully in the Plendar Gap, that soft, sensual dip of skin dividing the clavicle bones at the base of the neck. That it was created by a fellow countryman swells my heart with inordinate pride and brings tears to my eyes every time I wear it. I am wearing it now…

Surely this is what jewellery should be. A talisman, a rabbit’s foot, a good luck charm that brings immense pleasure each time it’s worn! (Rabbit’s foot be damned! I’ll choose a Hanut Singh creation every time!)

What then, does a Hanut Singh creation speak to?

It speaks to jewellery that acknowledges and reveres the past but is not tethered to it; of a thoroughly modern aesthetic and sensibility coalescing in the grand style of Indian jewellery with a passion for Art Deco detailing that shines through and more importantly, it is a clarion call to move ahead – always ahead.

It speaks to anyone who is their own person – someone who knows the full import of that valiant phrase: to someone who reveres the original over the mediocre; who chooses to take the path in the wood not taken; who marches to the drummer in their own head; to visionaries, to aesthetes who respect fine craftsmanship allied with a beau ideal of design; to people who can see beauty in the unusual, unexpected and offbeat. If you’ve ever felt like an

Outsider, Singh’s pieces will resonate with you on a deeply unexpected level. Singh’s pieces are for the movers and shakers in a world not content to settle for the merely pretty. They are for the person who was enchanted reading Dorian Gray’s rapture when he was introduced to the world of fine gems for, they had the shock of utter relatability.

I am grateful and inordinately thrilled that there are jewellers like Hanut Singh creating pieces for those of us who appreciate the timeless ineffable beauty of his singular creations.

‘‘These gems have life in them: their colours speak, say what words fail of” – George Eliot

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Courtesy The Sublime India Issue by Visionnaire