These days am exploring all kinds of fountain pens. I wonder why I didn’t do this earlier. Anyway, this is an earrings page and there’s something common between earrings and fountain pens and so this post.

What’s common? 2 things broadly.

1. The element of hand-craftsmanship
2. The element of precision in little details

Have discovered that plenty of fountain pen makers in India stopped making fountain pens because of market forces and economic reasons. As a result, some amazing fountain pens disappeared from the market completely. Those makers, who are still active, their fountain pens have started garnering a premium. It is a mighty skill once one understands that it needs to be taken care of.

It is the same for jewelry making. Makers are sort of dwindling. When I say makers, I do not mean machine-operators. The most common confusion when we start discussing making.

The earrings you see, these are made by sole special kind of makers. Machine Operators may become efficient but they ought to ‘understand’ and hone their skills a lot more to be able to make stuff like this.

When many jewellers attempt to show in their ads that they are ‘discounting making charges’, either they are lying or they are actually doing a disservice to this art form and to the maker.