Jewellery of Jammu & Kashmir

Srinagar, a centre for precious and semi-precious jewellery is flooded with traditional as well as modern designs. Most of the jewellery is custom made to met the demand of the ever increasing market. Jammu city has goldsmiths who repeatedly make traditional designs of jhumkas and naths for local consumers. The jewellery of Ladakh region is unique, distinctive, and bears links to its regional history. The Ladakhi women wear an ornament called sondus or branshil, a marriage symbol fixed on the left shoulder which has a few gold or silver discs connected by a number of long silver strands and is given by a mother to her daughter at the time of marriage. An extraordinary head dress called perak, are worn by Ladakhi women wear, and has between 20 and 200 large turquoise and other stones set across a wide leather piece.

"The jewellery of Kashmir is unique in design and very minutely worked. The various types of jewellery such as earrings, necklaces, bracelets, anklets, amulets (ta'wiz), rings, rosary (tasbah), tin or silver charm-cases and head-bands are all delicately worked, even though the base is sometimes solid. The Kashmiri jewellers seem to have had Nature as their model in most ornaments".