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Walk into any Jaipur jewellery workshop and mention polki, and the tone of the conversation shifts. It's treated as a different category entirely from ordinary diamond jewellery, and the reason has less to do with sparkle than with history.
If you've been shopping for fine jewellery and keep bumping into the word "polki" without quite knowing what it means, here's the short version, and why it's worth understanding before you buy.
Polki vs. Diamond: What's the Real Difference?
A polki diamond hasn't been cut into the symmetrical shapes most people picture when they think "diamond." Modern faceted diamonds are cut by machine to maximise sparkle. Polki stones stay close to their natural, uncut form. They're polished, but not reshaped.
The result looks different too: softer, warmer, less uniformly brilliant than a cut diamond. And because every stone is naturally irregular, no two polki pieces ever come out quite alike.
Where Polki Jewellery Comes From: A Brief History
Polki traces back to the Mughal era, when uncut diamonds were set into gold using a method called kundan. Kundan doesn't use prongs or claws to hold a stone in place; it relies on pure gold foil pressed carefully around each piece. Jaipur has stayed one of the strongest centres for this technique for centuries, and a single kundan-set polki piece can take an artisan several days of hands-on work to finish, from shaping the gold base to setting each stone individually.
Why Polki Jewellery Is Still Popular Today
In a market flooded with fast-cut, factory-finished diamonds, polki holds onto something most of that jewellery can't offer: heritage you can actually see. A few reasons people keep coming back to it.
It photographs well. The warm, low-key glow of polki catches light differently from faceted diamonds, which is part of why brides and event planners keep choosing it. It's genuinely one of a kind, since the stones aren't standardised into repeatable shapes. It pairs naturally with colour, since emeralds, rubies, and pearls are traditional companions for polki, giving a piece more character than plain sparkle alone. And buying it means supporting a setting technique passed down through generations of Jaipur artisans, rather than a machine process that could run anywhere.
How to Care for Polki Jewellery
Kundan settings are more delicate than standard prong-set diamonds, so a few precautions matter. Keep polki away from direct contact with perfume, hairspray, and lotion, all of which can dull the gold over time. Store pieces separately in a soft pouch rather than tossed together with other jewellery. Have the setting checked periodically if you wear it often. And skip the ultrasonic cleaner; the vibration can loosen kundan work that was never designed to withstand it.
How to Buy Polki Jewellery You Can Trust
Not all polki is made equally. What separates a good piece from a mediocre one usually comes down to the craftsmanship of the setting: how consistent the gold work is, and how thoughtfully the stones are paired with colour and design. Artisans working in traditional centres like Jaipur, where the technique has been refined for generations, tend to produce far more reliable results than mass-market imitations.
Whether you're building a bridal trousseau or just want something with more depth than a standard diamond ring, polki offers a design language rooted in history that still holds up today.
Explore Firuzeh Jaipur's handcrafted polki collection, made in-house at our Jaipur atelier using traditional kundan-setting techniques.
