Lac jewelry and handicrafts refers to the jewelry and decorative items made from Lac which is the purified form of an insect based resin found on some tropical trees. This lac is then used in the industry to produce shellac or lacquer – which are used as protective coating for wood based products.
Coming back to Lac, it finds it use for decorative purposes in India. Traditional handmade Lac jewelry sets, jewel boxes and display pieces made in Rajasthan, India have been popular all over the world since time immemorial. Among the various items in lac jewelry, the bangles need a special mention. Bangles made of Lac are said to bring good omen to those who wear them and hence find prominence as Bridal Wear.
Lac based beads and articles
There are two types of lac artifacts – the ones with a lac core and the ones with Lac filling much cheaper it is used to create decorative pieces like jewels boxes and display plates that dont undergo a lot of wear and tear.The final Plates are expensive no doubt because of the amount of mirror and stone work and not because of the lac- so don’t get cheated. (where lac or sometimes even wax is filled in a silver foil/any base and then enameled and embellished). A word of caution here – most of the jewelry sold on net as lac jewelry are not real lac – they are just dough bases that are enamelled with Lac colours.
Lac Jewelry Workshop
Recently I happened to attend a day workshop on Traditional Lac making, conducted by Dakshin Chitra (a center for South Indian arts & Crafts). Mesmerized by the beauty of Lac products that I have seen in the market, I decided to try my hand at it.Needless to say, I was exhausted. In order to make Lac core jewelry, one needs to prepare the colours first.this is done by heating, mixing, kneading, and hammer pounding the purified lac and stone colours till a dough like mass is formed. Then this is coated on heated pure lac and then rolled or shaped to make jewelry components. Once the pieces are shaped then mirrors or pieces or stone/wire are heat fixed and the components are joined to make a pieces of jewelry.
Extremely hard to do, each bead, each component is a work of art. So here are what I made during the workshop. They are not grand but I guess that it is not so bad for the first attempt.
My chosen colour was copper but then It turned out to be a rust red. That’s the beauty of Lac colours – you can never really predict the outcome. I chose my detail colour to be black because I was inspired by the ” red- black mirror work costumes of Rajasthani Tribal women” and hence wanted to mimic that.
Lac Jewelry making
So what did I do in the workshop? I rolled a bangle and placed some mirrors on it. I Made a pair of shiny earrings along with four beads. My instructor quickly shaped a tear drop pendant and embellished it. However, I am not very fond of it. That’s all I was allowed to do in the stipulated time.
After I came home, I strung the beads with some faceted beads and spacers to make a tribal styled necklace and I put a couple of hot jump rings behind the flat beads to make earrings. So much for a one day class. What do you think of my lac jewelry. Tell me in the comments.
I hope you found lac interesting
Cheers
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