Lacquered wooden jewelry

Lai’s handcrafted lacquered wooden jewelry celebrates a 200-year-old Channapatna (a small town in Southern India) tradition of making 100% natural, non-toxic, and sustainable lacquered wooden objects.

This craft has been passed down through generations and today, Lai works with a 5th generation artisan family to produce contemporary, design-forward jewelry that breathes new life into this ancient tradition.

A quick reckoner of the magic ingredients that make this sustainable jewelry:

(1) Natural, non-toxic resins secreted by microscopic insects are used to make the lac.
(2) Colors used to dye the lac are derived from various organic sources e.g. turmeric for yellow, vermilion for red and orange, and extracts of indigo plant for blue.
(3) This is a sustainable craft that uses only branches of locally grown wood, known for its medicinal properties. Wastage is kept to a minimum- residual wood chips are used as a raw material in the preparation of Ayurvedic hair oils while the wooden dust is used for making incense sticks.