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Kalakriti by KomalEnquire

How it's made

The craft isn't mine. The shapes are.

I'm Komal, a bead artisan. I work with women in rural Saurashtra who have been weaving glass beads far longer than I have — and I design pieces that belong in the wardrobes of people my age.

Who actually makes this

In villages across Saurashtra, bead weaving has been women's work for generations. It's done at home, between everything else a day demands, and it's usually treated as a hobby rather than a skill — which is one of the reasons it pays so badly.

It is not a hobby. Holding netting stitch in even tension across thousands of beads, with no frame to help you, is a technical skill that takes years to acquire and cannot be automated. The women I work with learned it from their mothers and aunts. I learned it from them.

So the arrangement is simple: they weave, I design and sell, and the work is paid for as skilled work. Every piece exists because a specific person sat down and made it.

What I bring to it

Traditional bead jewellery is often made for occasions — weddings, festivals, a few days a year, then a drawer. I wanted the same weave in pieces you would actually reach for on a Tuesday.

That means editing hard: cleaner silhouettes, fewer elements, colours chosen to sit against ordinary clothes rather than only against bridal red. Same technique, same hands, different eye. Nothing about the craft is diluted — the shapes are simply made for now.

Why it's made to order

Nothing here sits in stock. You choose the shade and the length, and the piece starts after that. It takes roughly two weeks, which is not a marketing device — it is how long the weaving takes.

It also means nothing is wasted on guesses about what will sell, and no one weaves a net that nobody wanted.

Start to finish

What happens after you message me.

  1. 01

    You choose

    A piece, a shade, a length. Over WhatsApp, usually in a few messages. Nothing is charged and nothing is started until we both know exactly what we are making.

  2. 02

    The glass is picked

    Fine glass seed beads, sorted by hand for colour and size. Beads that are off-tone or uneven go back — in a net this fine, one wrong bead shows.

  3. 03

    She weaves

    One of the artisans strings the net bead by bead, holding the shape by tension alone. There is no frame, no machine and no shortcut. It takes about a fortnight.

  4. 04

    It comes to you

    Checked, finished and sent. If the fit is wrong, it comes back and I fix it. A handmade piece should last long enough to be worth adjusting.

One honest note

Every photograph here is a piece I have actually woven. Nothing on this site is a render, a stock image, or a colour I have not made.

Come and ask me something.

Whether it's a shade you can't find, a length that isn't listed, or a question about how the weave holds — message me. I answer these myself.

Message Komal