Surat, since 2019
She chose silver for the practical reason. It turned out to be the right one.
Vani Jewellers was started in Surat in 2019 by Sarika R. Shah, with no outside money and one idea that has not changed since: what makes a piece worth owning was never the price of the metal.
Sarika bought jewellery the way you do when every purchase has to justify itself. Gold meant choosing one thing and living with the decision. Silver meant she could own several good pieces, wear them on an ordinary Tuesday, and feel no weight in the choosing.
She assumed that was a compromise. It was not. The pieces she loved were the ones she actually wore, and she wore them because owning them had cost her no anxiety.
That is the whole of Vani. Not luxury made cheaper. Luxury with the part that was never doing any work taken out of it.
Who built it
Sarika R. Shah, and the friend who backed her
Sarika started Vani in 2019 as a single mother with no investor, no inherited showroom and no safety net — only an eye for detail and a stubborn refusal to sell anything she would not wear herself.
Her closest friend saw what she was building before anyone else did, helped her set it up, and remains a stakeholder in it today. Vani was built by two women who knew exactly what the money was worth, which is still how every piece gets chosen.
Our commitment
Every piece is photographed before it is sealed
Not for the catalogue. For you. A dated photograph of your exact piece, in the condition it left us, filed against your order number.
It would be cheaper not to. We do it because it is the only way a question about a piece can be settled on evidence instead of argument, and because a house unwilling to keep a record is asking to be trusted twice.
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1
Bench check
Finish, stone setting, clasp and hinge, plating and weight, each checked against specification before the piece goes anywhere.
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2
The photograph
Your exact piece, photographed in its final condition, dated and filed against your order number.
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3
Sealed
Boxed and sealed by hand. If the seal is broken when it reaches you, you will know before you open it.
- 2019 Founded in Surat
- 925 Sterling standard
- 30 Days to change your mind
- 1 Photograph kept per order
Made and chosen
Some of this we made. The rest we went and found.
Our bench is in Surat, a city that has done the quiet technical work behind other people's jewellery for generations. What we make, we make there.
The rest we travel for: ateliers and specialist makers whose work we could not better, in techniques we have no business claiming as ours. We tell you which is which. A customer who finds out she was told a story stops believing the rest of it.
The material
What 925 actually means
Sterling is 92.5 per cent pure silver, alloyed for strength — the standard that has defined fine silver for six hundred years. It takes a higher polish than softer metals, holds detail they lose, and ages into something with a history rather than simply wearing out.
It is also the reason a woman can own six pieces she wears instead of one she keeps in a safe. We think that is the better arrangement, and we have never been embarrassed to say so.
Four things
What we will not do
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We will not call plated silver sterling, or let a product page imply a stone is something it is not.
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We will not present a piece we selected as a piece we made.
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We will not decline a return without telling you exactly what we found, and showing you the photograph we compared it against.
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We will not run a permanent sale and call the crossed-out number a price.
Where we stand
An Indian house, and not only for India
We are not a Western label with an Indian supply chain, and we are not an Indian brand translating itself for export. We sit in Surat and make for a woman in Mumbai, in London, in Dubai, who recognises the same things in a piece wherever she opens the box.
Indian craft has spent decades as the unnamed hand behind other people's labels. We would rather sign our work.
For the woman who knows what it is worth, and what it isn't.
Vani Jewellers
Come and hold one
Our store on Ghod Dod Road, Surat is open six days a week. Silver is a material you understand better in the hand than on a screen. If you are nearby, we would rather you judged it for yourself.