S. Ahalya, Founder and Design Head, Rasvihar Jewellery, Chennai
Guild For Service, New Delhi and Rasvihar of Chennai, India, present The Fine Art of Indian Jewellery, an exhibition and charity sale of fine jewellery to benefit the Widows of Vrindavan. This will be held on February 12, 13 and 14, 2009 between 10 am and 8 pm at The Oberoi Hotel, Dr. Zakir Hussain Marg, New Delhi 110003.
The Inaugural and Preview will take place on February 11 at 4 pm at The Oberoi. Smt. Sheila Dixit has graciously consented to inaugurate the event.
About the Guild For Service
For four decades, the Guild For Service has been empowering the powerless: women, children and other marginalised groups; across India.
Today, it works in 7 states and runs homes and facilities in 12 rural and urban settings. Under its gentle stewardship, numerous disadvantaged women are taking charge of their lives and rebuilding their futures; hundreds of children are going to school.
Founded by Padma Bhushan Dr. V. Mohini Giri, the services rendered by the Guild are purely voluntary. Most members are professional women, many of them senior citizens, who have come together to keep alive the Gandhian ideal of service before self.
Guild For Service spearheads the movement for giving status to widows, bringing back dignity and joy to their lives.
Widows of Vrindavan
A major thrust area of the Guild is to rehabilitate the destitute widows of Vrindavan-Mathura. Ten years ago, Guild For Service started Amar Bari, a shelter home, supported by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, Government of India.
The home provides food and physical security to residents. More importantly, it delivers opportunities for holistic development through counseling and medical aid, legal literacy, vocational training and skill upgradation, as well as through recreation. The goal is to enhance the widows' self-worth, and make them as self-reliant as possible.
Last year, the Guild started another home, Ma Dham, for 250 widows and women in difficult circumstances. This shelter home is also a residential facility, providing all services just like Amar Bari. In addition, the home practices herbal and vegetable farming, runs a medical centre catering to weaker sections from the region, and is working towards a dairy farming project.
The Guild For Service charity sale is an important initiative for Resplenda Expressions Private Limited, a company founded by jewellery designer S.Ahalya and Prabodh Jain. Rasvihar, a division of Resplenda Expressions Private Limited, opened its first showroom, spread over a luxurious 6,500 square feet, on September 1, 2007 at 17a Sterling Avenue, Nungambakkam, Chennai 600034, INDIA.
As a contemporary woman, designer S.Ahalya recognized a lack of choices that women with Indian sensibilities had when it came to jewellery that would complement their lifestyle. She then set out to create a line that offered classic styling with a sense of elegance. This handcrafted collection caters to the woman who appreciates the finer things and who is unafraid of expressing her individuality and personal style. Rasvihar will showcase its collections consisting of bangles, rings, ear rings and neckpieces made of 18 carat gold, diamonds and gemstones which are priced between Rs. 30,000 and Rs. 8 lakhs. Rasvihar clients are attorneys, doctors, homemakers, businesswomen and architects, just to name a few.
Garden of Aesthetic Delights
Welcome to Rasvihar. A place that's dedicated to making jewellery with soul, in a land where jewellery is at the very heart of life.
Jewellery-making was always a high art in India. Only the most gifted artists were invited to work with the rarest and most precious of materials; and they created jewels of staggering beauty for the edification of gods and royalty.
These artisans were schooled in esoteric knowledge, and invoked their particular deities to achieve the inspired grace necessary for creation.
Jewellery was meant to communicate. On the highest levels, it was intended to evoke a 'rasa' (moment of transcendence)
The traditional elite were lavish patrons of jewellery makers, who were equal parts creative artists and master-craftsmen. Their brief was simple: create jewellery that would awe the world with sheer magnificence and beauty.
However, with the decline of monarchies, a sizeable nouveau-riche began to use jewellery to project their wealth and status - a development with two immediate consequences for jewellery making in India.
The demand for aesthetics bottomed out, as the value of the precious material used became, de-facto, the value of the jewel itself. With no incentive for original work, artists were reduced to being mere craftsmen. They reproduced the classic designs of their erstwhile patrons, the maharajas and maharanis; reduced in scale, of course, to fit the purses of their customers.
This gave rise to the rather awkward phenomenon of clunky ornamentation, bereft of any meaning, that Indian jewellery came to be associated with.
Too soon, everybody's jewellery began to look like everybody else's.
Thankfully, there were exceptions.
There have always been evolved women who understood the symbolic power of jewellery, and harnessed it to create a precise persona in a particular setting.
Dancers and other creative artists were aided by the Natyashastra. This ancient treatise on dramatic theory offers detailed instructions in the use of body adornments, considered essential for creating a whole aesthetic/emotional experience (or rasa). The rasa is sparked by the catharsis of a primal emotion, which could be anything from erotic love to righteous fury.
Many Indians, especially in finer circles, have grounding in the traditional arts. They instinctively understand how to use jewellery: to control exactly what they wish to communicate - no more, no less - in a manner that's entirely relevant to a specific situation.
Of course, these evolved aesthetes are probably the most demanding customers in the world.
Precisely why they're valued clients of Rasvihar.
About Ahalya:
Ahalya, co-founder of Rasvihar, trained the traditional Indian way in dance and fine art. She underwent rigorous, special art training for 12 years starting at the age of six. She has completed a course in diamond grading conducted by the International Gemology Institute.
"People are my inspiration,"
What the media says
Rasvihar
Ahalya has very clearly set standards in the luxury shopping sector. It's an experience. Everyone who comes here once wants to come again ... Rasvihar is luxury redefined. Luxury that doesn't sceam but whispers.
- BBC-Good Homes
Haute & Classic
Stepping into the colonial structure of Rasvihar, it's hard to believe that you are within the walls of a jewellery store … Even a first-timer will fall in love with the world that defines her – the world of tranquil fashion.
- The New Indian Express
Designs that transcend time
From ethnic that's haute to contemporary with oodles of originality, Ahalya's range speaks a different design vocabulary … "My forte is classicism. I don't like to dilute tradition by giving it a blatantly modern spin."
- The Hindu
Antique flavour
Each piece has been exclusively conceptualized and created by jewellery designer Ahalya, keeping in mind the 'serious jewellery buyer'.
- Femina
If you’d like more information about this topic, or to schedule an interview with S.Ahalya, please call Prabodh Jain +91.94440.53507 or email press.contact@
Photo:
http://www.prlog.org/
